


A New Kind of Magic

by Soprano



Category: The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Anxiety, Halloween, Magical Realism, Pre-Relationship, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-03-17 19:55:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 40,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13666197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soprano/pseuds/Soprano
Summary: Katsuki Yuuri is from Halloween.Victor Nikiforov is from Christmas.This is the story of how they met.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is, for the most part, Yuri on Ice characters existing in the Nightmare Before Christmas universe. One could probably read this without having seen NBC. In essence, you could probably read this without the knowledge of either fandom really, since it's an AU where everything sort of happens from scratch. Source material knowledge will enhance your reading experience, but you could read it without knowing anything about either show/film and, hopefully, still enjoy it.  
> If you have any questions though, I'm happy to answer, so feel free to ask.

On the day when Jack Skellington hijacked Christmas, Santa Clause flew over Halloween Town, temporarily turning its weather into winter. No one in Halloween Town had ever seen snow or ice before that day, and they were enthralled.  
Yuuri was still quite young when it happened. He slid onto the frozen lake and let the ice carry him. It seemed like a new kind of magic at the time. The ice was so smooth and he could glide across it in a unique style of dance.  
Yuuri had spent all of his life in or near water. His parents were river spirits. Yuuri was born in water and lived in water. He’d seen it flow, stand, rot, boil, evaporate, rain down...but he’d never seen it turn to ice. Until that day when another holiday’s ruler flew over his town and covered it in snow.  
As he danced across the ice, he was happier and more excited than he’d ever been about anything in his life. He wanted to do it forever. He wondered if he could think of a way to do it more gracefully. He often slipped as his feet were wide and long, designed for swimming, but he thought, perhaps, he could glide more effectively if he could minimize that surface. Some of Yuuri’s neighbors stuck little frozen pumpkins to their feet, but Yuuri thought it would be more effective if he could find a way to glide over the ice on something sharper. Some sort of blade, perhaps.  
The possibilities were endless, and Yuuri was filled with excitement.

Alas, the winter in Halloween Town didn’t last. Santa’s spell soon wore off, and the ice melted. The weather never changed in Halloween, always remaining slightly brisk, but never cold enough for water to freeze.  
Yuuri cried for several hours, sitting at the side of the lake that had been covered in ice only hours earlier.  
When his parents found him and he told them of what had happened through sobs and tears, they told him that if something made him this happy, he should find a way to get it back. Yuuri was a witch after all, inheriting his magical abilities from his grandparents. He was young and had little control of his magic, but it was still inside of him. Surely, if Santa had a spell that could freeze a lake, Yuuri could find one as well. 

And he did. It took him almost all the way to next Halloween, but he found a spell that could turn water into ice. He’d asked every witch in town, he went through every book and visited every magical shop, but in the end he found a spell that could turn liquids into solids.  
The spell had initially been created as a weapon. It was meant to freeze blood inside living beings. But with a few adjustments, it could turn water into ice as well.  
When Yuuri was ready, his parents found a nice secluded spot in the woods and created a new lake just for him. It was shallow, but he didn’t need depth.  
He gathered the ingredients and read the spell. The mixture in his pot turned dark blue and began to glow. He poured it out into the new lake and held his breath.  
It didn’t take long. The water turned the same dark blue, crackled slightly, and solidified.  
Yuuri let out a sigh of relief. He had his ice. 

It was a long time still before Yuuri found the perfect way to dance over the ice. He tried many different things, from knives glued to books to sharpened rocks attached to wooden planks. In the end, he found that what worked best was 2 blades stuck very closely together. They dug into the ice, but still allowed for decent balance.  
Yuuri’s parents made him special shoes from sturdy river weeds, and he attached the blades to the shoes with a combination of slime and magic.  
After that, all there was to do was learn to dance on them. Yuuri knew it would take a long time, but he didn’t mind. Halloween creatures were virtually immortal. He had decades, if not centuries to master this new wonderful thing that he had now. Maybe some day he would tire of it, but maybe he wouldn’t. Either way, it filled his existence with the kind of passion that simply looking over the river or preparing for yet another Halloween never really did.  
Now he had something that no one else in town even knew existed. 

Years went by as Yuuri practiced and practiced and practiced gliding across the ice. Sometimes he had to renew the spell after the ice became too uneven from his blades. The magic layered over itself, becoming stronger and expanding, and soon much of the woods around the lake turned the same glowing dark blue. The leaves on the trees around the lake became circular, with sharp edges and intricate designs in the middle. They all seemed to be different from each other. Whenever Yuuri tried to hold one, it would melt in his hands.  
In Christmas Town, they called them ‘snowflakes’, but Yuuri didn’t know that. He just called them Blue Magic Leaves.  
The blue glowing forest eventually attracted attention of Halloween’s other inhabitants, and Yuuri’s secret was soon discovered. Someone told Jack that there was a glowing forest at the edge of town and a boy who solidified a lake and danced on it with blades strapped to his feet.  
Jack went to check and found Yuuri dancing across the frozen lake.  
He was mesmerized. Hiding behind a tree, he watched as Yuuri carved circles and loops into the ice. He wasn’t just gliding around aimlessly. It was a dance, choreographed to perfection. At one point Yuuri jumped up into the air, spun around his own axis, then landed back on the ice so gracefully that Jack could barely suppress a gasp.  
This reminded him of his first visit to Christmas Town – the feeling of seeing something new, something he’d never even known existed, something utterly beautiful.  
Jack loved the macabre and darkness of his hometown as much as anyone. It had its own kind of beauty if you knew where and how to look. But sometimes seeing the same thing for centuries could become boring. Sometimes one wanted a different kind of beauty.  
That’s why Jack had once fallen in love with Christmas. That’s why he couldn’t look away as Yuuri danced across the frozen lake, unaware of being watched.  
When Yuuri finished his performance, Jack came out of his hiding place and banged his phalanges against each other happily.  
“That was so beautiful!” he yelled. “What was that? What’s it called? Where did you learn to do that? Did you visit Christmas Town? How did you make all this?”  
He stepped onto the ice and immediately slipped, spreading out his limps in a spider-like shape to avoid crashing down into a heap of bones. He stepped off the ice and walked around the lake instead, admiring the frozen trees around it.  
“I...” Yuuri said, terrified of having been caught. And by the ruler of the town no less. “It doesn’t really have a name. I just...dance,” he said quietly. “My parents made the lake and I made it like this with a spell.”  
“Oh!” Jack said happily, his face expressing excitement vividly despite the lack of eyes or skin. “You’re from the Yutopia river, right? You’re the river spirits’ son?”  
“Yes, that’s me.”  
“That’s wonderful!” Jack said. “How long have you been...dancing?”  
“A few years. Since that time when Sandi Claws made it cold for a day.”  
“Oh yes, yes, of course!” Jack spun around, knocking a few Blue Magic Leaves off the trees. “Everyone should see you! Would you like to dance for the town? We could make it a show! It’s so beautiful, it’s not fair you’re here all by yourself and no one gets to enjoy such beauty!”  
Panic shot through Yuuri as he thought of the whole town watching him dance. He’d only ever done it on his own. He had no idea if he could do it in front of everyone. What if he failed? He didn’t always perform well under pressure.  
“I’m...I’m not sure,” he said quietly.  
“Think about it!” Jack said. Then he was momentarily distracted by a particularly fascinating leaf. He touched it and it fell to the ground, causing him to grin in amusement. Then he looked at Yuuri again. “If you don’t want to, that’s alright. But it’d be so much fun for the town! We could all use something new.”  
He smiled, then walked away, disappearing into the woods.  
For a while, Yuuri just stood in place. Eventually, he started moving again, gliding across the ice with no real purpose or plan. He thought that maybe the rest of the town wouldn’t be as excited about Yuuri’s dancing as Jack was. But then again, many of Halloween’s inhabitants tended to be excited about whatever Jack told them to be excited about.  
At the very least, Jack gave Yuuri an opportunity. He didn’t have to dance for the town if he didn’t want to. But maybe if he wanted to...he could. 

That night, after he was done at the lake, he returned home to the Yutopia river to rest. His parents warmed up the water for him so he could relax. His mother brought him dinner.  
“Mom,” he said, “do you think I should skate for the town? Jack asked me too.”  
His mother smiled at him kindly and sat next to him.  
“Do you want to?”  
“I don’t know.”  
She nodded in understanding. Yuuri didn’t just inherit magic from his grandparents. Anxiety and self-doubt also ran in the family.  
“Think of it this way,” she said with a soft smile, “if you didn’t do it, would you regret it, or would it be a relief?”  
Yuuri thought about it, but it didn’t really help.  
“Ah...both?”  
“Hmm, well, then...imagine that you rejected the offer. Don’t say anything to Jack yet, but imagine that you said no and that you won’t be doing it. Let the thought settle in your mind. Live with it for a few days if you need to. Then see if the regret or the relief are stronger.”  
Yuuri wasn’t sure he could actually do that, but he could certainly try.  
“Thanks, Mom.”  
“Anytime, love.”  
After finishing his dinner, Yuuri settled down in the warm water and relaxed, trying not to think of the upcoming decision just yet. After a while, he fell asleep. As he slid down under the surface of the water, his gills opened up and he slept peacefully at the bottom of the river.


	2. Chapter 2

Yuuri soon realized that his mother’s method of decision-making was surprisingly effective. As soon as he imagined that he’d rejected the offer to perform for the whole town, really let the decision settle in his mind, he felt immense relief.  
But...over the next few days, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that regret was slowly but surely overpowering the relief. As much as Yuuri liked dancing on his own, he sometimes felt as though something was missing. There had been purpose and excitement in the initial preparations – finding the spell, creating the ice, constructing the dancing shoes. Then he learned and learned and practiced and practiced, and that had been wonderful as well.  
But now that he was actually quite good, sometimes he felt like some of that spark was dimming. He didn’t want it to go out, didn’t want to get bored of his dancing. And maybe...performing for the town could give him something new to reignite the excitement.  
The relief from thinking he wouldn’t have to dance for a crowd was short-lived, a brief moment of comfort from knowing he wouldn’t have to do something risky and scary. But the regret was deeper – it made him feel like he was missing out on something that could be really good for him in the long run.  
So a week after their first conversation, Yuuri found Jack and told him that he wouldn’t mind performing for the town people after all. He would need some time to prepare, and some music, perhaps. But ultimately, he was up for it.  
Jack was almost terrifyingly excited. Yuuri would later understand, after spending some time with him, that Jack was prone to very drastic mood swings and felt everything very deeply. When he was sad, he was debilitatingly miserable. When he was excited, his joy was pouring out of him like a mountain waterfall.  
They set up a date for Yuuri’s first performance. Jack got the Mayor and a few other people to help with preparations. Yuuri worked with the band to create some music for his dance. Then he set to practicing. 

When the day of the performance came, Yuuri was as ready as he could be.  
His parents had created a lake in front the the city hall the day before, and Yuuri had turned it to ice with his spell. The band set up nearby. Benches were placed all around the lake.  
When people started gathering, Yuuri started to panic. All these people came to watch him and him alone. It was a lot of pressure.  
His mother came up to him and rested her hand on his arm.  
“Yuuri, remember, you’re doing them a favor,” she said. “They didn’t pay to see a show, you owe them nothing. You’re performing for them out of the goodness of your heart. If it doesn’t go well, no one will lose anything.”  
Yuuri took a few deep breaths.  
“I don’t want to disappoint anyone,” he said.  
“Don’t worry,” his mother said. “They’ve never seen anything like this before. They don’t know what to expect. Even if you don’t perform to the best of your abilities, most of these people...won’t even know.” She smiled, and Yuuri couldn’t help smiling back. “And we’ll be proud of you no matter what.” 

Yuuri put his dancing shoes on and moved to the center of the lake. The band started playing. Their music was sort of broken, slightly off-key, but Yuuri had choreographed a program to exactly that sort of tune.  
He started dancing, slowly cutting patters into the ice. Despite his mother’s best efforts, he was still deeply nervous. So much so that when he attempted to perform a jump, he fell. And then he didn’t get up.  
He wasn’t injured, just slightly bruised, nothing he hadn’t felt before. But he was so demoralized that his whole body fell limp and he couldn’t force himself to get back up.  
People in the audience whispered amongst themselves, trying to understand what was happening. They didn’t know if this was part of the show or not.  
The band stopped playing. For a while, there was silence.  
Yuuri rearranged himself so that he was on his knees. He looked down at the dark blue surface underneath him. A tear fell down onto the ice, making a small puddle that froze and became part of the lake almost instantly. He took a few deep, steadying breaths.  
Then he got back up, looked at the band and motioned for them to restart the music.  
The broken melody started again, and Yuuri began his dance again, this time with more dedication and certainty. He’d been afraid of failing, and he has failed. But all these people had come here to watch him, and he was going to give them a show. Even if it wasn’t from first try.  
This time when he jumped, he landed gracefully and continued to dance. The audience accompanied his performance with various amused sounds. They weren’t sure what they were seeing, but it was like nothing they’d ever seen before. There were many types of magic in Halloween Town, but most of the skills, jobs, and occupations were set in stone. People rarely learned new things, everyone simply did what they were supposed to.  
In a place dedicated entirely to preparations for a single event every year, seeing someone do something to utterly new and unexpected was both enchanting and perplexing.  
Yuuri didn’t know a lot of difficult moves. Everything he performed he had made up himself, on his own, in the woods. His shoes could not support some of the more difficult things he wanted to do, but he made the best of what he had.  
To his audience, it didn’t matter that his jumps weren’t high and his spins weren’t fast. He was showing them a new type of magic, and they couldn’t look away.  
When Yuuri stopped, striking a beautiful pose, the band stopped playing their haunting tune.  
It was a few moments before anyone reacted, and Yuuri began to get worried. But once Jack started his rattling applause, everyone else happily joined in, cheering, clapping, banging chains and throwing a few detachable heads into the air.  
Yuuri took a bow, and got off the ice, smiling. 

After that, his performances became a regular occurrence. Whenever Yuuri was ready to perform a new sequence, he would tell Jack, and arrangements would be made for a performance to take place.  
Yuuri started getting gifts from people in town, in thanks for the spectacles he provided. One of the town’s metalworkers helped him design better blades, while Sally, the queen of Halloween herself, helped him design better shoes from cork bark and several layers of cloth held together with good old enchanted swamp slime.  
His dancing was so loved that it even became a regular feature during the actual Halloween celebrations – perhaps, the highest honor one could ever get in town.  
Many other denizens attempted to dance the way Yuuri did once enough ice was available. It was a lot of fun for kids, and a few on-ice games were developed, but no one has quite reached Yuuri’s level of artistry. Years on, he was still Halloween’s most treasured ice dancer. The one everyone looked forward to watching.  
Yuuri appreciated it, he loved that he brought joy to the town’s people. But after a while, he started feeling sort of lonely. No one quite understood this new art the way he did, no one was dedicated to it the way he was. He didn’t usually mind being on his own, but sometimes...he wished he could talk to someone who shared his passion.

One night Sally found him moving around in circles on the town square lake ice, well past sundown. He looked sad and dejected. She stood by the side of the lake until he noticed her.  
“I’m sorry,” he said as he approached her. “Was I too loud, did I wake you?”  
“No, don’t worry about it,” she said. “What’s wrong?”  
“I...” He lowered his eyes. “Nothing’s wrong.”  
“Oh, Yuuri,” she said kindly, though it came off ever-so-slightly condescending. “I know that look. I see it on Jack more often than I wish. You’re unfulfilled.”  
Yuuri almost laughed. ‘Unfulfilled’. Somehow Sally had chosen the perfect word.  
“I just...wish I knew other people who did...this.” He motioned vaguely around the ice.  
“I see.”  
“It’s silly, I know,” Yuuri said, shaking his head. “I shouldn’t complain.”  
“You should always complain when you’re unhappy,” Sally said. “That’s the only way you can get help to make things change.” She watched as he sighed and started taking off his dancing shoes. “Yuuri...you know, there is a place where everything is covered in snow and ice all the year round. This thing you do...they do it a lot there.”  
Yuuri looked up at her, hope tentatively blooming in his chest.  
“Where is that?”  
She gave him a slightly crooked smile.  
“Christmas Town.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” Jack kept repeating as he paced around the library.  
Sally had just shared her idea with him, and Yuuri stood by, hiding most of his body behind her. Jack was considering the plan, which in his case involved a lot of moving around in a slightly menacing fashion.  
“I don’t think they’d mind,” Sally said. “It’s just a visit. They won’t even notice.”  
“But...ah,” Jack collapsed into his electric chair dramatically. “I don’t want to upset Sandi Claws.”  
After what he’d done only a few years back, Jack wasn’t exactly welcome in Christmas Town. Sandi Claws had mostly forgiven him for that unfortunate event, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t apprehensive about Jack showing up in his town again.  
“Then I’ll take him,” Sally said. “Sandi likes me. Well...he likes me more than he likes you.”  
Jack frowned a little, unsure of whether to feel offended by that, but, well, it was true.  
“I don’t know,” he said again.  
Sally came up to him and kissed him on the top of his skull, then walked out of the library, beckoning Yuuri to follow.  
“Well,” she said as they walked out of the house, “when would you like to go?”  
“We’re...we’re going? But Jack...”  
“Yuuri, you know we don’t really need Jack’s permission. I just told him because I didn’t want to do it behind his back. I knew he’d react this way, and I knew in the end I’d be the one to accompany you.”  
“Oh,” Yuuri said, looking down at his feet as they walked toward his river. “I don’t want to upset him though. He’s been very kind to me.”  
Sally nodded, wobbling slightly as they walked down the uneven road.  
“Give him a day,” she said. “He’ll come around. He knows what it’s like to want something more than what you have, something that can’t be gained where you are. He’ll understand once he stops worrying.”  
“Okay,” Yuuri said quietly.  
They kept walking until finally they reached Yutopia and said their good-nights. Yuuri went into the river while Sally went back home.

It turned out that Sally had been right, and it only took Jack a day to change his mind and approve of Yuuri’s visit to Christmas Town. It wasn’t against any sort of rules, after all. So long as there weren’t any major disruptions, short visits were mostly harmless.  
Yuuri told his parents about the plan and they supported him, though not without a bit of worry. They bundled him up in many layers of clothing and gave him as much water as he could carry.  
Sally met him at midday by the river and they walked into the woods. She was wearing a long coat that covered most of her body. Yuuri assumed that was for the cold, but really it was because the citizens of Christmas Town weren’t used to people made of cloth stuffed with leaves and held together with thread, and Sally didn’t want to scare anyone.  
They walked through the woods until they reached a small clearing with a circle of trees. Yuuri didn’t know exactly what each of the entrances represented, but he could guess they were all holidays.  
“Have you ever been to Christmas Town before?” Yuuri asked.  
“I’ve been to all of them,” Sally said.  
“Really?”  
“Jack isn’t the only one who gets restless, you know.” She led them to the tree that had a green, decorated pine on it. “My creator didn’t let me out of the house for many years after bringing me to life. Eventually I learned to put him to sleep with herbs and run away. Eventually I ran away for good. But sometimes I still feel trapped. Even in all of our town. So I visit others.”  
“What are they like?” Yuuri asked, looking around at the other tree-doors.  
“They’re...different. Usually much brighter than ours. Louder, with more color. The people look different.” She touched the handle on the door to Christmas Town. “Are you ready?”  
Yuuri didn’t know if he was ready, but he wouldn’t get any readier than he was, so he nodded, bracing himself for whatever was to come.  
Sally opened the door and stepped through. Yuuri peeked in carefully. It was dark, he wasn’t sure where to step if he were to walk through, whether there was even anywhere to step on. Suddenly, a gust of wind wrapped itself around him and he got pulled in. For a few moments he was carried through a dark portal, eventually landing in a heap of snow on the other side as the door closed behind him.  
“Ah!” Yuuri squeaked when the cold flakes got under his clothes.  
Sally laughed quietly beside him.  
“It does that,” she said. The first time she had visited, the door had pulled her in as well and it had taken her 3 days to fully dry out her body.  
“This...this is snow, right?” Yuuri said, picking up a bit of the whiteness that surrounded him.  
Though Yuuri had found a way to create ice with a spell, and some of the trees around his lake produced large, single snowflakes, he hadn’t actually seen snow in such large quantities since the day Santa flew over Halloween. And that was mostly a distant memory now.  
“Yes,” Sally said, helping Yuuri get up. “Most of Christmas Town is covered in it all the year round.”  
“It’s...cold.”  
Yuuri shivered a little as snow melted and ran down his skin where it had gotten under his clothes. He was a water creature, but this was different. His parents kept the river warm most of the time, he wasn’t used to water being this cold. The air was colder too.  
“People here are used to the cold. They live in this weather all the time, it’s normal for them.”  
They walked through the snow for a while until they reached the first houses, and almost had to squint against the brightness of the buildings and lights. Everything was covered in lights. There were colors Yuuri had never seen before, hadn’t even known existed. He didn’t even know what they were called.  
There were people walking by, talking, heading somewhere, doing something. Kids were playing around in the snow.  
A train ran past, frightening Yuuri with the loud noise it made.  
“Ah...Are you sure it’s alright for us to be here?” he asked, looking at Sally with slightly frightened eyes.  
“Do you want to leave? We don’t have to stay if you’re uncomfortable.”  
“Ah...no, I don’t think so. It’s just...a lot.”  
“It is,” Sally said with a smile. “I was really scared the first time I came here. I couldn’t understand why Jack had been so excited after visiting this place. I just found it loud and bright and terrifying.” She held onto a bright red pole and twirled around it. “It grew on me after a while, but it was really overwhelming at first.”  
Yuuri felt a little better knowing that his discomfort wasn’t out of the ordinary. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Christmas Town per se, it was just that he wished he could turn the volume and brightness down a little.  
They walked down a street for a while. Several people passed them by, smiling and waving at them. Yuuri awkwardly waved back.  
Soon enough they reached a frozen lake where several children were gliding over the ice in aimless circles. Some were better at it than others.  
“Oh...” was all Yuuri could say.  
“Told you,” Sally said, bumping softly against his shoulder. “These are just kids having fun though. Let’s keep walking. Maybe we’ll find someone who dances the way you do.”  
They passed several frozen lakes, and Yuuri grew more and more amazed every time they saw yet another group of people dancing on the ice. It appeared to be so common here, it seemed that everyone was doing it.  
The ice was a little different in this town than what Yuuri had created back home. It was more silver than blue and always surrounded by large heaps of snow.  
As they passed a large gray building, Sally walked over to one of the windows, motioning for Yuuri to join her. The side of the building said Christmas Ice Castle. There were several people already standing by its windows, looking in.  
“What is it?” Yuuri whispered, feeling a little strange about peeking into someone’s windows.  
“Look,” Sally said simply.  
Yuuri rose on tip-toes to look into the window and then froze.  
Inside was a young boy, dancing on ice. He was probably around Yuuri’s age, maybe a little older. It was hard to tell as people didn’t look or age the same in different realms. He had long silver hair, which seemed only fitting for how at home he seemed to be on the ice. He was graceful and fluid, and far better at this strange art than Yuuri could ever hope to be.  
As the boy jumped up into the air, Yuuri gasped. He rotated several times in the air, then landed effortlessly on one of his blades. He turned and turned, creating patterns on the ice.  
There were other dancers there, but none were as captivating as the silver-haired boy.  
It took Yuuri a moment to come out of his trance. Then he looked at Sally with pleading eyes.  
“Do you know who that is?”  
“No,” she said. “But my guess is if you’re looking for someone who shares your passion – he might be the one you’re looking for.”


	4. Chapter 4

“We should go in,” Sally suggested, “talk to him.”  
Yuuri immediately panicked.  
“No,” he said, barely above a whisper. “No, no, no, no.”  
“Why not? Isn’t that why we came?”  
It was. Of course, it was. They’d come to find someone who shared Yuuri’s passion for dancing on ice, and they’d done that. In fact, they found many, many people who happily swept over the frozen surface with varying degrees of skill, and a few who, apparently, did so with _a lot_ of skill.  
Too much skill, really, compared to Yuuri.  
What that silver-haired boy was doing was amazing. Yuuri felt pathetic and incompetent by comparison. He couldn’t rotate in the air several times when he jumped. He hadn’t even known that it was possible. He couldn’t spin like that. He couldn’t even understand how half of the things that boy did were possible at all.  
He began to cry. It scared Sally. She didn’t really know what to do. She’d considered the possibility that a visit to a different realm might be in some way distressing to Yuuri, but she hadn’t been prepared for him crying about finding precisely what they’d come to find.  
“I’m sorry,” Yuuri said between sobs.  
Sally reached over and took the flask hanging off Yuuri’s belt. She uncapped it and offered it to him.  
“Here, drink some water.”  
He did. It didn’t help much, but it distracted him from crying long enough that he began to catch his breath.  
“I’m sorry,” he said again, “I didn’t mean to cry.”  
“What’s wrong? Yuuri, I don’t understand,” Sally said honestly. “Didn’t you want to talk to someone like you?”  
Yuuri let out a shuddering breath.  
“He’s not like me,” he said. “He’s so much better.”  
“Well...of course, he is.” Sally shrugged. “He lives in a land that’s frozen all the year round. He’s probably been doing that ice dancing thing for as long as he’s been able to walk.” She motioned for Yuuri to look up at the writing on the side of the building. “They have an Ice Castle, Yuuri. They have ice everywhere, but they still built a castle just to have ice in it. They obviously take this stuff very seriously.”  
“But I’ve been ice dancing for years!” Yuuri said desperately.  
“In a land where ice didn’t even exist until very recently,” Sally reminded him. “You can’t compare yourself to people here. It’s just not fair.”  
“I guess,” Yuuri said quietly, taking another sip of his water.  
He took another look inside the Ice Castle, then turned around and started walking back the way they came.  
“We’re walking away?” Sally asked, wobbling after Yuuri.  
“I can’t talk to him,” Yuuri said, his eyes cast downwards. “Not yet.”  
They walked the rest of the way in silence, eventually getting to the realm doors and returning to Halloween. Sally walked Yuuri back to his river. As they finally reached his home, she looked at him cautiously, unsure of how to approach the situation.  
“What do you want to do?” she asked.  
“I want to get better. Maybe...maybe not as good as that boy, but better than I am now.” He sighed. “I want to be worthy of dancing beside him.”  
Yuuri wasn’t sure if it was even possible. He’d been dancing for years. How would he ever get any better than he already was?  
“Alright,” Sally replied. “Do you need any help?”  
Yuuri looked up at her hopefully.  
“Ah...yes?” he said, already feeling guilty. He hated asking for favors, but he probably couldn’t pull this off on his own. “I’d like...a spy brew,” he said. “I’ve never done one before myself. And I need materials from Christmas Town, on ice dancing. Books and such. You’re right that they’ve been doing it for much longer. Maybe I could learn from them.”  
“Good idea,” Sally said. “I’ll see if Magda and Renalda can help with the brew. And I’ll ask Jack how he’d gotten all that stuff he brought back from Christmas.”  
“Thank you,” Yuuri said, bowing in gratitude.  
His parents came out of the water to welcome him back, while Sally went home to talk to Jack.

The town’s most skilled witches were more than happy to help Yuuri with the spy brew that allowed him to see into Christmas Town. He tuned into their television and radio programs and began to watch everything he could about ice dancing. Or, as they called it in Christmas, figure skating. Well, there was ice dancing too, but it was a different discipline. Yuuri still wasn’t clear on the differences.  
There were many people doing it. Some alone, and some in pairs.  
The silver-haired boy’s name was Victor, and he was a competitive figure skater in Christmas Town. There were, apparently, competitions in this sport as so many people were doing it that some started doing it as a primary occupation. With the weather in Christmas Town being perfect for year-round presence of ice, it only made sense that Christmas events and celebrations included skating.  
Victor was very good. The best, really. He won a lot of competitions. He danced in many celebrations. He was famous in Christmas. Their television and radio often talked about him, and Yuuri soon learned that he’d been skating since the age of 3, that he liked building snowmen in his free time, that he liked tea with jam, and had a dog named Makkachin.  
Sometimes Yuuri would spend long hours by his spy brew, watching and listening to everything he could find about Victor. He felt a little guilty about it, but he told himself that he was just following a famous athlete’s career. After all, Victor was a celebrity. No doubt, many people spent hours watching programs about him in Christmas Town as well.  
Except, Yuuri didn’t want to be just another fan. He was an athlete too. A figure skater, if you will. Maybe his town didn’t have dozens of ice rinks or ice castles or competitions. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t get as good as Victor.  
Better maybe?  
Well, that was a wild thought, and Yuuri chastised himself whenever it popped into his head. And yet, sometimes, it still did.

Procuring materials on figure skating wasn’t as easy as making a spy brew. Yuuri could learn quite a lot from watching Christmas’ television, but he wanted to know more, and books were harder to get.  
It turned out that when Jack had initially visited Christmas and brought back all those things from it, he had actually...stolen them.  
Yuuri didn’t really want to do that. So instead, with Sally’s and his parents’ help, he found some things that he could barter or sell. It wasn’t easy, but in the end, he found people in Christmas that were willing to buy things from Halloween, if only because they were strange and unusual and couldn’t be found in Christmas. After all, people in Christmas sometimes got bored of the monotony and single-mindedness of their home as well, and were happy to see and own something new.  
Jack worried that this was all disrupting the balance of virtual non-contact between holidays, but so far Santa had been either unaware of or indifferent toward Yuuri’s interactions with Christmas’ denizens. 

Once Yuuri acquired books and magazines on figure skating, he was able to create better blades for his dancing shoes. Or skates, as they called them in Christmas. He considered buying skates in Christmas, but they were expensive and would eventually wear down. It would be better for him in the long run to continue making his own in Halloween.  
The metalworker helped him make a single blade with 2 edges and a groove in the middle, and set sharp picks in the front that allowed Yuuri to push off the ice and jump higher.  
Soon enough he could rotate twice in the air as he jumped, and eventually even 3 times.  
When he first demonstrated his skills at a Halloween celebration, everyone watched in awe, wondering if Yuuri was casting spells as he danced. They thought, surely, what he was doing had to involve some sort of magic.  
Sometimes Yuuri would sneak into Christmas Town, either on his own or with Sally, and watch figure skating competitions. He sat in the crowd many times, watching Victor win. On a few, very rare occasions, he watched him take second and even third place. And though there was sadness to that, Yuuri was also glad to know that Victor wasn’t infallible, that he too could make mistakes. It made him feel better about his own failings.

One year, on Yuuri’s birthday, his parents brought home a large wooden box. There were strange sounds coming out of it. Scraping, rattling.  
“Yuuri, love,” his mother said. “We know that ice boy you like has a dog. You always look at pictures of her in your brew pot.”  
Yuuri’s eyes widened. Could it be?  
“We decided,” he father added, “maybe it’d be good for you to have a companion as well.”  
They opened the box and out jumped a small dog. Well, a skeleton of a small dog.  
The little creature ran out to Yuuri and ran around his feet, his whole body clicking a little as his bones rubbed against each other.  
Yuuri sat down, and the dog immediately jumped into his lap. Yuuri started petting him. He knew it was nothing like what petting Victor’s dog would be like, because Victor’s dog was alive and warm and had fur, while this one was nothing but bone, but Yuuri didn’t care.  
This was his dog and he was perfect.  
“Well,” Yuuri’s mother said, “what are you going to name him?”  
Yuuri looked down at the adorable little ball of happiness in his lap, wagging his little boney tail as Yuuri ran his hand over his skull.  
“Vicchan,” Yuuri said. “His name is Vicchan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  This is Scraps, from Corpse Bride. I think he's a decent visual aid for Vicchan in this universe. ^_^


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the Nightmare Before Christmas universe, the Hinterlands is the area out in the woods in Halloween Town where the doors to the other worlds are located. It's not explicitly named in the film, but is mentioned in meta-canonical material, like games.

Victor had been figure skating for as long as he could remember. He first set foot on the ice at the age of 3 and continued to spend most of his time there for many years to come.  
Figure skating was a highly respected sport in Christmas Town. Anyone who had the talent for it was given the resources and opportunities they needed in order to develop it. Victor was selected by a famous coach and given practice time at the nearest Ice Castle. His future had been seemingly set in stone before he was even tall enough to grab things off a table.  
Victor didn’t mind. He was happy to be skating, even if it was hard and quite painful at times. He had a calling for it and was glad to be allowed to pursue it. Of all the possible things one could be doing in Christmas Town, skating was definitely not the worst option. Victor didn’t think he’d be particularly happy to spend his life perpetually preparing for Christmas.  
In truth, Victor didn’t very much like Christmas. The holiday was what his whole town was all about, but Victor was a bit angry at Christmas. Because he was born on the very same day that Christmas was celebrated, and of course, no one ever cared much about his birthday when Christmas was happening. His parents were nice about it, they still congratulated him and gave him extra gifts, but his birthday had always been a side-show to the main event, and it made him a little bitter about Christmas as a whole. He’d always imagined what it would be like to live somewhere else. Somewhere where his birthday was just his birthday and could be celebrated on its own merits, without anything else overshadowing it. 

Years went by looking much the same – people prepared for Christmas, people celebrated Christmas. Victor skated. He got better and better each year, collecting more and more ribbons, awards, and medals. As it turned out, Victor wasn’t just good. He was the best. Which really wasn’t that much of an accomplishment, he sometimes thought.  
Christmas Town was quite large, but not that large. And like all holiday towns, it existed in isolation. Up until fairly recently, people didn’t even know other holiday towns existed. This changed one night when a creature from another holiday town showed up on Christmas Eve and gave everyone severed heads, snakes, and toys that wanted to eat you.  
Victor thought that was the most excited thing that had ever happened. But it would never happen again.  
The mess Jack had made was promptly cleaned up, and life went on as usual. People prepared for Christmas, people celebrated Christmas. Victor skated.  
As Victor aged, he began to wonder what would become of him if he could no longer skate.  
Although they didn’t know this as they had no one to whom to compare themselves, people in Christmas aged very slowly. Victor could skate for decades before he finally became too weak to continue. And then he’d have to do something else. Prepare for Christmas, presumably.  
He wasn’t sure what scared him more – the idea of skating and winning without competition for many more years, or the idea of not being able to do so anymore.  
New people would sometimes enter the sport, but few presented a real challenge. Victor won against them with ease, to the point where no one ever expected anything else. He was so loved by the audience and judges that even when his opponents were good, he rarely ever risked not getting some sort of award.  
And little by little, Victor was starting to get bored.  
Until one year, something happened. Something Victor couldn’t have even hoped for in his wildest dreams. Something completely new.

*****

“Jack, I have an idea,” Sally said one day, a few months after the latest Halloween celebrations.  
They were sitting behind their house, watching bats play around in a nearby tree.  
Jack turned to Sally with a half-worried, half-excited expression.  
“Do tell,” he said.  
“You know I visit other holiday worlds sometimes...”  
Jack sighed.  
“Yes, I know.”  
“Well, it turns out that this...figure skating thing our Yuuri does actually exists in a few of them.”  
“Really?”  
“Not to the same extent as in Christmas, but yes. In Valentine’s Day it’s quite popular. Couples usually skate together to celebrate their love, but some people do it all the year round like they do in Christmas. I’ve seen an inside rink in Independence Day as well. In New Year’s it’s about as popular as in Christmas.”  
“There’s a door to New Year’s?” Jack asked, his eye sockets widening.  
“Yes, it’s a bit farther off in Hinterlands.”  
“I’ve never been.”  
“You should go, I think you’d like New Year’s. It’s quite similar to Christmas, but with a different history.”  
Jack got distracted for a moment by daydreaming before remembering how this conversation began.  
“You said you had an idea,” he reminded.  
“Yes, well... You’ve seen Yuuri lately, right? He’s gotten very good. And a few more people have starting skating as well now that there’s so much ice out in the Frozen Woods.” She looked at Jack conspiratorially. “What if...we suggest to the other holiday leaders to have figure skating competitions with skaters from different holidays? It would be great if Yuuri could show off his skills to someone other than people in Halloween. If he wanted to, that is.”  
“Have you asked him?”  
“No, but I think we should see first if it’s even possible. I don’t want to give him false hope only for it to never happen.”  
“Hmm,” Jack said, raising one brow ridge. “This could be interesting.”  
And it would be a great excuse to visit other holiday worlds, he didn’t say, but Sally knew he was thinking it.

Sally and Jack spent the next few days visiting various holiday worlds, talking to their leaders and citizens, trying to figure out if this idea was actually worth pursuing.  
Reactions varied. Some of the rulers, having heard of what Jack had done to Christmas not so long ago, were apprehensive about allowing interactions between worlds. Others, on the contrary, thought there should be more of such interactions. They thought what had happened with Jack only happened because there wasn’t enough awareness of the connections between holidays, and their existence in virtual isolation led to confusion, boredom, and bad decisions.  
New Year’s leader was really excited about the prospect, since the sport was quite popular in their world, and Santa, having largely forgiven Jack for his blunder, said he wouldn’t mind as long as his people didn’t mind.  
Sally was never one to miss a good opportunity.  
“Why don’t we talk to your world’s best figure skaters?” she suggested, knowing exactly who would be on that list. “See what they think of this.”  
“Good idea!” Santa replied. “There’s an Ice Castle not far from here. Our best skater practices there.”  
It was a short travel to the Ice Castle.  
They entered to a choir of shocked gasps. For many reasons. For one, Santa Clause, the leader of Christmas, just casually walked into the Ice Castle. For two, he was accompanied by a skeleton and a person made of cloth patches.  
“How can we help you?” said Yakov Feltzman, the rink’s main coach.  
He sounded forcibly respectful. Not rude, but not particularly welcoming. Santa was the ruler of the town and all that, but he was still interrupting practice, and bringing in weird-looking strangers into his rink.  
The skaters all came up to the side of the rink closest to where the conversation was happening.  
“My friends here,” Santa said, indicating Jack and Sally, “have suggested that our world and a few others have a joint competition in your sport. Now, how would you feel about that?”  
Yakov stared at Santa in silence, with an expression that was difficult to read as it hadn’t changed much from the one he’d had before. For a moment, there was complete silence in the rink, but then it was broken by a loud exclamation that came from the ice.  
“That sounds amazing!” Victor yelled. “New skaters! From other worlds! Oh, I bet they don’t skate like we do here. They probably have different techniques, different equipment. Do they even have the same ice?” He turned to Sally and Jack. “Do you have the same ice?”  
“Ah...no,” Sally said, smiling at Victor’s excitement. “We don’t have the weather for natural ice. Our main skater creates ice with a magic spell.”  
“A magic spell?!” Victor screamed, causing his fellow skaters to move slightly away from him. He looked to Santa, forgetting all politeness and ignoring the difference in social status. “We need to have this! Please, let’s do this. It’ll be so much fun!”  
Santa looked around at the other skaters, who were not quite as excited as Victor was, but that was a high bar. No one was openly opposed to the idea though, so Santa turned back to Yakov.  
“Are you alright with this?” he asked.  
“I don’t care what to train them for,” Yakov said.  
That wasn’t entirely true. He was excited about the prospect of his skaters competing on a bigger scale, but he wasn’t about to show it.  
“Great then!” Santa said, turning back to Sally and Jack. He led them back out of the Ice Castle. “Where should we have the competition?”  
“We were thinking either here or New Year’s,” Jack said. “You have the weather for it. Valentine’s does too, but they don’t care for the sport as much, so it might not gather much of an audience.”  
“If this is a success,” Sally added, “we could rotate placement each year.”  
“Yes, yes!” Santa said cheerfully. “Let’s gather up all the leaders from participating worlds and figure this thing out.”

It would be a while before everything would be sorted out well enough for the competition to actually take place, but little by little they were making it work. The rules were written out, times and locations settled.  
When Sally had first brought this up, she had many motives. It wasn’t just that she wanted Yuuri to show off his skills. Lately, she’s been noticing more and more that Jack was becoming bored with his duties again. He loved Halloween, and he’d been happier since Sally had entered his life, but the monotony and repetitiveness of dedicating a whole year to a single day of what essentially added up to the exact same celebration still got to him. She wanted to give him something new to occupy his time. And she was glad to see that it worked out perfectly. Jack traveled to other worlds, talked to other holiday rulers, participated in things he’d never done before. He would come back home inspired and excited. Sometimes he would bring something back from another land and talk for hours about how he could incorporate it into the next Halloween celebration. Sometimes he would drag her off to a new land just so he could show her something new that he’d discovered.  
He turned out to have a bit of a soft spot for Valentine’s Day. Sally didn’t much like it herself, but she liked how happy Jack was when he was in that world, so she often accompanied him there, watching as he smiled at yet another heart-shaped object or found yet another souvenir to give to her as an expression of his love.  
It only took her about a year to convince him that he shouldn’t just steal things from other worlds. He didn’t stop bringing things back with him though, but he did get better at bartering instead of taking while no one was looking. 

After many months of discussions and preparations, the first inter-world figure skating competition was ready to take place. And now there was only one thing left to do – find out if Yuuri actually wanted to participate.


	6. Chapter 6

Almost no one in Halloween Town knew that Sally and Jack had been working on setting up figure skating competitions with leaders of other holiday worlds, because most people in Halloween Town didn’t really care all that much about figure skating. They liked watching Yuuri perform, but that was about the extent of their interest.  
Yuuri, however, did know.  
He followed Christmas Town’s news on his spy brew, and he occasionally visited the town itself. People in Christmas were pretty excited about the upcoming Holiday World Figure Skating Championship, or Worlds for short, so of course Yuuri knew.  
How he felt about it, he still wasn’t sure. He realized sooner or later he would be asked to represent Halloween at the competition, and he was facing much the same dilemma as he’d already faced when Jack had first asked him to perform for the town's people.  
Now an even bigger-scale event was available to him, but with it came more fear, anxiety, and uncertainty.  
One day as he was practicing on his own at his lake, late at night, Sally appeared from the woods and stood by the edge of the ice. Vicchan circled her a few times until she bent down to pet him, causing him to wiggle his tailbone happily.  
Yuuri skated up to the edge and stopped in front of her.  
“You know why I’m here, Yuuri,” Sally said.  
It sounded both like a question and a statement.  
Yuuri nodded.  
“Do I have to participate?”  
“Absolutely not. This is all still in formative stages. There’s not much to gain or to lose. You can wait and see how it goes, and participate next year, or the year after. Or never.” She smiled. “I thought this would be a good opportunity for you. But that’s all it is – an opportunity. Not an obligation.”  
Sally didn’t tell Yuuri that he was one of the main reasons she’d set this all in motion in the first place. That would be putting unnecessary pressure on him.  
Whatever the original motivations, Worlds had a life of its own now, bringing the holiday realms closer together, giving their populations something new to do and to watch. Even if Yuuri chose not to participate, creating the competition wouldn’t have been a waste of time.  
“I’m not sure I’m good enough,” Yuuri said, skating figure 8s beside Sally.  
“No one is.”  
“I bet Victor is.”  
“That’s true,” Sally said with a smile. “I’ve talked to him, you know?”  
Yuuri looked up, eyes widening slightly.  
“You have?”  
“Yes, when we first brought this up to Santa. He took us to the nearest rink, and Victor was there. He was very excited about the idea.”  
Yuuri drew a deep breath, the cold air of the Frozen Woods chilling his lungs.  
Yuuri had assumed Victor would participate, but now the reality of it was placed at his feet and his dilemma tilted slightly on its axis.  
Ever since he’d first seen Victor, he’d dreamed of skating at his level. Now he could do so. Not only that, but he could participate against Victor. Would be win? Well, he didn’t think he would. At least not right away. But he’d never know unless he tried.  
“When is the competition?” Yuuri asked, straightening out as if to prepare for battle.  
“Between Halloween and Christmas.”  
“Sign me up.”  
“Are you sure?”  
“No, but this is the decision I’m making.”  
Sally smiled, pride obvious in her eyes.  
“If you need anything, let me know.”  
Yuuri nodded nervously.  
“Would you...come with me? To the competition?”  
“I’d be honored.”  
Sally gave Vicchan one last pet on his smooth skull before walking away, leaving Yuuri to practice his skating, now with more purpose than ever.

As Sally walked home through the Frozen Woods, she admired the blue trees, marveling at how much the forest had changed since Yuuri had first cast his spell.  
Minako, one of the forest spirits appeared out of an oak trunk.  
“Sally!” she exclaimed, flying gracefully through the air. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”  
“It’s been too long,” Sally agreed. “How have you been?”  
“Not bad, thank you for asking.”  
“Are the classes going well? How are the new kids?”  
Minako had a school for young ghouls where she trained Halloween’s kids, especially ghosts and spirits, how to scare and startle people. She also helped stage performances for Halloween. Yuuri had been one of her students once, and he still sometimes attended the classes even now that he was older. He wasn’t a ghost, but he liked how they moved, liked to see them dance and did his best to dance along with them.  
“Oh, they’re terrifying!” Minako said proudly. “Oogie’s minions came by the other day to snoop. My students scared them so much they ran off screaming.”  
“That’s not something you see every day.”  
“Certainly.”  
Sally kept walking as Minako flew through the air beside her, graceful and eerie at the same time.  
“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Sally said, “are you alright with this?” She waved her hand around to indicate the blue trees around them. “Your forest has changed, and, well...no one ever asked your permission.”  
Minako smiled, flying through a tree.  
“It would have been nice to ask first, wouldn’t it?” she said, but she was only teasing. “Yuuri has apologized to me when the trees started turning blue. He hadn’t known his magic would do that.” She flew up into a tree, bringing a gust of wind with her that knocked down a few snowflake-leaves. “It worried me at first,” she admitted. “But it’s nice to see things change. Nothing changes much around here. The woods have been the same for as long as I can remember. And now they’re...not.” She smiled, flying around Sally in a circle. “I think it’s wonderful that our little world can still evolve.”  
“You are very wise.”  
“They do say that.”  
Minako was as old as Halloween itself. She’d seen it spread across the human world, she’d seen it change and adapt to new cultures, evolving from its Celtic roots to what it was today. She’d watched as some humans got angry about how it had changed, while others became happier thanks to what it gave them in its current form. She’d seen it gain and lose popularity as Halloween Town gained and lost population.  
Halloween wasn’t the oldest or the most important holiday in the human world, but it meant the world to some humans, and Minako had long since stopped being upset about things changing with time. Change wasn’t always good, but it wasn’t inherently bad either.  
The forest was old, and it had been the same throughout most of its existence. Now suddenly...it was changing. But it was still there. It hadn’t been destroyed or hurt or forgotten. It was becoming new. And that rarely happened to things that were as old as those trees.  
Sally and Minako kept making their way slowly through the woods, catching up on the latest from each other’s lives as the trees around them sparkled in the setting sun.

*****

At first, the Holiday World Figure Skating Competition was intended to be a single event. But as word got out and more and more holiday worlds signed up their skaters for the competition, it was decided that there would be 3 qualifying events, held in different worlds, and a final, where the highest-scoring skaters would compete against each other.  
The first year, the final would be held in Christmas, but would move around the following years if the competition remained popular.  
Each world could enter up to 3 competitors in each discipline – free skating, ice dancing, and pairs.  
Not every world maxed out their available slots. Valentine’s Day, for instance, had 3 pairs, but only one ice dancer, and no free skaters. Independence Day only had 1 representative in each discipline, as did Diwali. And Halloween only really had Yuuri. There were 2 others young skaters from Halloween who signed up for the competition, but it wasn’t expected to be much more than a trial run for them.  
Each event would run over a period of 3 days, and each skater or pair would have a chance to perform 2 programs – a shorter and a longer one.  
The judges would be either leaders of their representatives from each participating world.  
The scoring system was still far from perfect, but several test runs had been conducted in order to make sure that it was at least serviceable.  
Immediately before each competition, everyone’s gear and costumes would be checked by a group of experts from all the worlds to make sure that no technical or magical performance enhancements were used. There would also be a medical check-up, which would be a bit difficult since everyone’s biology was so different, but that’s why there would be representatives from all the realms, as well as a few experts from non-participating worlds, to make sure everything was fair.  
By the time the first competition was held, everything was as ready as it could be.  
Of course, whether or not the same could be said for all the competitors still remained to be seen. 


	7. Chapter 7

Although, Yuuri had performed many programs for Halloween’s residents, he decided to create new programs for Worlds.  
Once again, he created music with the help of Halloween’s favorite and only band; then procured a recording device from Independence Day and made recordings of the music so he could use it during competitions. Competitors were, in fact, allowed to bring live accompaniment with them to competitions, since not every holiday world had means to record music, but the band didn’t want to leave Halloween, so Yuuri had to improvise.  
He still wasn’t sure if his programs were good enough for the competition. No one really knew what it would be like, since nothing like this had ever been done before.  
Several of the competitors had quite a bit of experience with sports events – namely those from Christmas and New Year’s – but most had never competed before. They’d skated recreationally or as a performance art to provide entertainment for their worlds’ people. Skill and experience levels varied drastically. Yuuri had no way of knowing how well he’d measure up against the other skaters. Well, he was quite certain that someone – likely Victor – from Christmas would win, but other than that, it was all a mystery.  
It was equally exciting and terrifying. Which was sort of...very Halloween. Yuuri quite liked it, though it would be hard to tell from outside observation, because his facial expressions and body language displayed mostly fear and nervousness for weeks leading up to World.  
His parents and friends worried, but they didn’t questions his decision to participate. They knew Yuuri’s anxiety was a dangerous beast. But they also knew he wasn’t a weak creature himself.

Yuuri was assigned to participate in the very first qualifying event, which would take place in the City of New Year’s. He and Sally would be going 3 days in advance, so that Yuuri could do the medical check-up, and get used to the new ice. They would also be staying for a few days after the competition because Yuuri had never been to New Year’s before, and was curious to see what it was like.  
Yuuri packed everything he would need, said goodbye to his parents and headed for the Hinterlands. As he entered the woods with Sally, many of Halloween’s denizens waved and cheers for him. By now, almost everyone in town knew about Worlds, and though most didn’t much care about the sport, they all knew Yuuri and wanted to support him in this new endeavor. Besides, most of holiday creatures, whatever their holiday was, enjoyed celebrations. If there was something to celebrate, they would happily join in the festivities.  
Several large pots of spy brew were already waiting on the main square for when the event would start, and almost everyone in Halloween intended to watch and cheer for Yuuri. 

Stepping through a portal to another realm was always strange. If you hesitated, the magic pulled you in and you ended up in a heap on the other side before you knew what was happening.  
It had happened to Yuuri the first time he visited Christmas, and sure enough, it happened again as he entered New Year’s.  
To add to his embarrassment, this time there was a greeting committee, standing by the portal to meet everyone arriving for the competition.  
“Welcome to the City of New Year’s!” they chimed, completely unfazed by Yuuri’s ungraceful entry.  
He was still shaking snow out of his clothing as he and Sally were led to the large building where they’d be staying.  
At first glance, New Year’s was similar to Christmas – festive and covered in snow – but Yuuri didn’t see much of it on his first days there.  
Instead, he went in for his medical evaluation, gear and costume checks, then went to practice at the rink where the competition would be held.  
As he skated slowly in a corner of the rink, careful not to run into anyone or get in anyone’s way, he occasionally glanced around at the other competitors.  
Some were skating around casually, not doing any jumps or any difficult moves. It made Yuuri feel a little better to realize that a lot of his competition would likely be at his level or lower, and that at least he wouldn’t be the weakest competitor there.  
However, there were also skaters that were dedicated and skillful, performing moves Yuuri hadn’t even seen before. And this was just practice. Who knew what they would do during the actual competition.  
Yuuri was both glad and disappointed that Victor was assigned to a different qualifying event. On the one hand, it meant that Yuuri wouldn’t be distracted from the actual competition by Victor’s presence; plus without Victor there, Yuuri, and everyone else for that matter, had much better chances at winning. But on the other hand, Yuuri had been dreaming of sharing ice with Victor since the day he knew Victor existed, and not being assigned to the same event as him meant that the only way he could do that now was to qualify for the final. There was absolutely no guarantee that this would happen. 

On the first day of the competition, Yuuri arrived at the rink with his hands shaking slightly. A lot of his opponents had coaches, but Yuuri was on his own. He had Sally, but she didn’t really understand skating very well, and while her support was deeply appreciated, it was also largely uninformed. She could root for him, but couldn’t really give him advice or comment on how he measured up against other skaters.  
As there had been no precedent for this sort of event and no one had ever been judged by an inter-world system before, the only way to decide the order in which the competitors would skate was at random.  
So they drew numbers out of a very festive hat, with Yuuri drawing precisely the number he hoped not to.  
“Of course,” he said in defeat, looking down at the number card in his hand. “The first to skate in the first event of the first inter-world competition in history. No pressure.”  
Sally smiled at him sympathetically.  
“At least you won’t have to sit around and wait for your turn and worry.”  
“There is that,” Yuuri said, though there wasn’t much excitement in his voice.  
Maybe he wouldn’t have to worry while waiting for his turn, but he’ll have to worry as each new skater took the ice after him, likely gradually pushing his score further and further down.  
During the final warm-up, Yuuri looked around at the bleachers that surrounded the rink and realized just how many people were there. Even more people were watching through various observational techniques in their respective worlds, but those people were far away. The people at the event were real and numerous, and Yuuri felt himself growing more and more anxious as the practice time gradually ran out and his time so skate came closer.  
As he stepped off the ice at the end of practice, making way for the ice resurfacer before his short program, his vision became blurry, and he felt as though he might lose consciousness.  
“Yuuri, hey,” Sally said softly. “Listen, I know this might not be much help, but just remember – this whole competition, it’s just an experiment. It means nothing. It doesn’t define you as a person or as a skater. I think you’re fully capable of winning, but even if you don’t, it’s not that big a deal. You can try again next year, or go back to what you did before and forget all about this silly idea. I know you can’t stop worrying, but just remember that this all means only as much as you want it to.”  
Yuuri smiled weakly, looking down at his skates.  
Sally meant well, and she was right, but that was the whole problem really. This competition didn’t mean all that much in the grand scheme of things. For a lot of Yuuri’s opponents it was just a fun thing to do while waiting for the holidays. But for Yuuri, skating had become his life since the moment he first saw ice. He created his own ice, his own skates, his own skating techniques. In many ways, it felt as though his whole life had been leading up to this moment – to showing his skills to all the realms.  
The competition only meant as much as Yuuri wanted it to. The problem was that to Yuuri it meant just about everything.


	8. Chapter 8

There were no rules as to where the programs had to start or end, so the skaters were free to use the ice surface as they pleased. Yuuri stood closer to one side of the rink, his head lowered.  
When the music began, slow and melancholic, he moved, starting with a few simple circles carved into the ice. His arms moved around him fluidly, as if floating through the air.  
Yuuri had names for some of the moves he performed, others he’d adopted after watching skaters in Christmas Town, but for the most part, his skating was an emotional journey. He expressed his feelings through movement. It didn’t much matter what it was called when he put his feet just so on the ice. It was far more important to Yuuri that his skating expressed what he was feeling.  
Yuuri performed only 1 jump, with 2 rotations. He could do triple jumps as well, but was saving them for his long program.  
As the music sped up ever so slightly, Yuuri spun, faster and faster, eventually slowing down as the music reached its slightly discordant final notes.  
He finished on the side of the rink opposite from the one where he’s started. When the music ended, the rink was quiet.  
The reaction started with a few scattered claps, but eventually others joined it for proper applause. Yuuri bowed, and skated off to meet Sally at rink exit.

People in the audience had largely mixed feelings about Yuuri’s performance. Most of the audience were local, from New Year’s, a few had arrived from other worlds to support their representatives at the competition. Most of their holidays were bright and festive, with upbeat music and colorful outfits. Yuuri’s dark costume and sombre accompaniment were foreign and confusing to a lot of them.  
Though Yuuri’s program was captivating in its own way, for a lot of people in the audience it was simply too difficult to relate to. They still applauded, because that’s what they thought they were supposed to do; and they could appreciate his skill and emotional dedication to his program, but many of them were underwhelmed by his performance.  
The competition was advertized as a merry event. They’d come to have fun, but instead the very first program they saw was something they could only interpret as dark and gloomy. No one quite knew what to think.  
Most people in the audience didn’t really understand Halloween. Many holiday denizens could relate to other holidays at least to some degree – the happiness, celebration, and brightness were present in many holidays. And they were present in Halloween as well, but not quite in the same way. So to someone from Christmas or Valentine’s Day, Halloween just looked dark and sad. Though Yuuri hadn't set out to make his program morose, to people who were used to sparkles, bright colors, and cheerful tunes, Yuuri's style felt strange and unsettling. And it just wasn’t quite what they’d been hoping to see at this event. 

Despite this, Yuuri received what appeared to be a fairly high score.  
Judges gave the skaters marks on a 1-7 scale, with decimals if necessary. The highest and lowest scores were removed, while the sum of the rest constituted the final score.  
Yuuri received several 5s, one 4, a 5.5 and a 6.3. His final score came up at 53.5, which meant absolutely nothing at the moment, because there was nothing to which to compare it.  
Yuuri sighed, cursing his luck once again for making him the first one to skate. Not only would his score continue to be all but meaningless until everyone else has skated, but the judges had nothing to compare him to.  
Considering how different the techniques and traditions of skating were in different lands, there were very few technical requirements, and very little unity in how the sport was understood. As such, the judges gave marks based on how they felt about the program, what their own personal perception of the sport was, and how each skater compared to the others. Except Yuuri, of course, whom they couldn’t compare to anyone yet. 

Yuuri removed his skates and walked away from the rink to sit in the bleachers with Sally and watch the other skaters perform their routines.  
The second skater to take the ice was from Boxing Day. She was tall and her costume was in different shades of green and red.  
Her music was fast and upbeat and she danced around the ice as if she didn’t have a care in the world. She was good, though Sally thought she wasn’t as good as Yuuri. Then again, Sally didn’t think anyone was as good as Yuuri. Not even that Victor from Christmas that Yuuri adored so much. Yuuri’s skating had more heart.  
Nonetheless, the competitor from Boxing Day outscored Yuuri, as did the ones from Kwanzaa and Las Posadas.  
The most distressing moment for Yuuri was when the skater from Christmas took the ice.  
Almost everyone expected Christmas and New Year’s to win everything there was to win at this event because skating was more popular in those holidays than anywhere else. But it was one thing understanding it and another being in competition with someone so technically superior.  
Christmas’ representative had a simple dark green costume that contrasted well with her bright red hair. She smiled as she skated out to the center of the ice, waving at the audience.  
Her routine was energetic, but intense. Almost scary to watch in its technical complexity. The music was a little darker than what one would expect from a Christmas denizen, fast with dips and peeks that accompanied the skater’s skillful performance.  
She danced across the ice as if she’d done it her whole life, because actually, she had. She was more comfortable on ice than on solid ground, and it was obvious from the way she performed a myriad of complex moves with apparent ease.  
She had 2 jumps in her short program, with 3 rotations each. And even though the scores weren’t calculated directly in relation to the technical difficulty of the skaters’ programs, there was no doubt that that the judges wouldn’t let this sort of skill go by unrewarded.  
After the short program, Christmas was in first place, followed by Kwanzaa, Las Posadas and Boxing Day, with Halloween in 5th place. Yuuri wasn’t dead last, as the representative of New Year’s hadn’t done very well and dropped to six, followed by Diwali.

After all the scores for the free skaters’ short programs were announced, Yuuri went back to his temporary residence, opting not to stay to watch the pair skaters.  
“You’ll do better tomorrow,” Sally said quietly. “You were first, they didn’t know how to judge you. Now they know you deserve much better than the marks they gave you.”  
Yuuri nodded and managed a weak smile, but he didn’t quite believe her.  
He turned away from the rink and walked away, leaving behind a narrow trail, which was soon evened out by a fresh layer of snow.


	9. Chapter 9

Yuuri spent the rest of the day in his room, attempting to rest, but mostly worrying and doubting himself.   
After finishing in 5th place after the short program, his chances weren’t looking good. Only 7 skaters would qualify for the final – the gold and silver medalists from each event, as well as the highest-scoring bronze medalist.   
If Yuuri got really lucky, he could still get bronze, but then he’d have to sit around and worry about whether or not he would qualify until the last event was done, and he wasn’t sure he could weather the anxiety. He almost thought he’d prefer to simply lose and be done with it. 

Yuuri’s room had a bathtub, luckily. It was small, but it would have to do.  
When he couldn’t sleep, sometimes the only thing that helped was getting submerged entirely. He always slept better under water, ever since he was a child.   
Of course, back home his parents would keep the water at a perfect temperature for him, and the river bottom was comfortable and spacious. Here, in a strange room in the City of New Year’s he had to make do with a tiny tub of paint-coated metal, but it was better than not sleeping at all.   
By the time he woke up, the water had gone cold, and his neck had gone a bit stiff, which certainly wouldn’t be conducive to good skating.   
He still had some time before he had to go to the rink, so he moved to the bed and slept for a few more hours.   
He woke up to Sally knocking on the door of his room.  
“Yuuri, are you alright?”  
“Yeah,” he replied when he was awake enough to speak.  
“We should get ready to go, your division starts skating in 2 hours.”  
Yuuri had slept through most of the day. The pair and ice skaters had already finished.   
He sighed into the pillow and started slowly peeling himself off the bed. 

About half an hour later he was ready to go and mostly ready to skate, his costume and gear stored securely in his backpack. Sally smiled at him kindly when he met her downstairs, and he was suddenly overtaken with immense gratitude for the fact that she was there. He didn’t have a coach, and there was no one in New Year’s that rooted for him specifically. But having Sally there with him was enough, because she was always kind to him, she always looked like she was happy to see him. And she often believed in him more than he believed in himself. Seeing her genuine, warm smile anchored him and made him feel that he wasn’t alone in all this after all.   
Besides, there were people rooting for him back home, his parents undoubtedly had viewing parties around caldrons of spy brew, and even if most people in his town didn’t really feel about figure skating the way he did, they never failed to support him.   
He squared his shoulders and walked out of the building and toward the rink, where a clean sheet of ice was waiting to host the next spectacle. 

Yuuri was so nervous he could barely watch the 2 skaters that performed before him. He could hear the cheers for the representative of New Year’s, and the disappointed sounds coming from the audience when the skater failed a jump, but beyond that, he barely knew what was happening.   
When it was Yuuri’s time to skate, he took the protective shields off his blades, and stepped onto the ice, almost afraid to slip, like he had back when he first started.  
Sally took his hand and squeezed it gently. She could feel his hand trembling a little in hers.   
“Try your best,” she said quietly. “That’s all anyone could ever ask for.”  
Yuuri nodded, Sally let go of his hand, and he skated off to his starting position.

As he looked down at his feet, his vision swam slightly. He could hear a commentator in the distance, providing information about him  
“...the representative of Halloween. His theme for the reason is Solitude...”   
Yuuri tried to tune it out, taking a deep breath and raising his head.  
The music started.   
As Yuuri began his program, he thought of all the people that were back in Halloween supporting him, of Sally who’d made the effort to come with him, of his parents that never once doubted him in his idea to freeze water with magic and dance across it on sharp blades.   
He knew he was loved, deeply. And yet, more often than not, he still felt alone.  
He was always alone on the ice. He thought sometimes that this might have been one of the reasons he fell in love with skating in the first place. The peace and calm of the solitude that came with skating. Even when he was watched, even here at a competition, he was on his own. The ice was his, and even when others surrounded the rink to observed, they never stepped onto the slippery surface. It was just him.  
The solitude of ice skating matched the loneliness inside Yuuri, and it felt more right somehow to perform like this, on his own, rather than in a crowd, as holiday celebrations usually called for. Most holiday people thrived on the togetherness of their festivities, but Yuuri craved solitude in a way few among his peers could ever understand.   
Yuuri carved patterns into the ice, moving to the morose tones of the music, unaware of the mixture of awe and unease that settled over the audience.  
As the music sped up, he flew into the air, landing the first jump of his program. It was a triple jump, one of the hardest Yuuri could perform. The rush from landing it cleanly helped Yuuri maintain some confidence as he performed elements he’d learned from watching and reading figure skating materials from Christmas, followed by another triple jump.   
His third and last jump was a double, but the way it was performed, it was really 2 and a half rotations. Yuuri landed it cleanly, and a few people in the audience gasped.   
The music gradually slowed down, and Yuuri finished his program on a wide spin.   
Once again, a lot of people in the audience didn’t quite know what to think.  
As the crowd began to tentatively applaud, Yuuri finally regained awareness of his surroundings. A bouquet of black roses landed at his feet, followed by a plush skeleton toy. It took him a moment to realize that someone in the audience had thrown them out for him. The color and arrangement of the flowers as well as the theme of the toy made it apparent that these weren’t just generic gifts, but rather something that had been brought specifically for him. Someone had made the effort to find these after seeing his short program, and Yuuri was suddenly hit with a realization that he now had supporters outside of Halloween. Not many, possibly just one, but still. Someone who didn’t personally know him had chosen to support him because of the way he skated.  
He picked up the bouquet and toy and bowed deeply to the audience. In the distance he could just hear the commentator’s voice again.  
“If nothing else, we can all agree that it takes a true artist to give a performance like that,” she said. “The skaters here all have different skill levels and techniques, but there’s no denying true talent. I think...I think we all saw that here.” 

Yuuri’s score was high. He got several 7s, and none of his marks were below 6 this time. He outscored the 2 skaters before him with ease and had a good chance if remaining in first place for some time, at least.  
As the other skaters performed their routines, Yuuri watched, clutching his plush skeleton, waiting nervously for the scores to be announced.   
The skaters from Boxing Day and Las Posadas had both fallen on their required jumps. Kwanzaa’s representative did better, but still scored just below Yuuri.   
By the time the skater from Christmas took the ice, it was obvious – Yuuri would qualify for the final.   
He let out a deep breath, finally relaxing properly for the first time since he’d arrived in New Year’s. Sally wrapped an arm around him and he leaned into her, almost collapsing as the tension drained out of his body.   
As they watched Christmas’ skater perform, there was no doubt that she was the best skater at this competition. Not only did she perform a number if complex elements, but also a total of 5 jumps, 3 of which were in a combination. She was technically superior to everyone else present, her movements were sharp and refined in a way that was still unattainable for her opponents.  
As she finished her program with a rapid spin, the audience cheered, and the judges were all too happy to give her close to a perfect score.  
Yuuri felt honored to be second-best to a performance like that. He would have been happy to win, but he’d never expected to. Getting silver against a skater so obvious above him in skill and experience was no small achievement.   
As the final results were announced, Sally looked at Yuuri with a proud smile.  
“I still think you were better,” she said with a shrug.  
And however unlikely it might have seemed, Yuuri knew that she truly meant it.


	10. Chapter 10

Before going back home, Sally and Yuuri spent a few days in the City of New Year’s.  
Sally had been there many times before, but for Yuuri it was new.  
When he walked out into town after the final celebrations for the competition were over, he was surprised to realize just how little he’d noticed around himself before. His anxiety had been so bad during the competition that his surroundings barely registered.  
Now that it was over, he relaxed quite a bit. Not completely, of course, because now he knew he was going to the final. Where he would skate against Victor. And all the other best skaters from different holiday worlds. But that was still some time away, and for a little bit at least, he could relax.

Though the snow and brightness in New Year’s were reminiscent of Christmas Town, the city differed greatly from its closest relative. It was a lot more varied in its festivities.  
Unlike holidays that originated in single religious celebrations which then spread around the world, shifting and morphing to adapt to local culture, New Year’s was celebrated in many different places in the human world completely independently. In some cultures it was a religious holiday, in others it was not. The traditions of how it was celebrated also differed greatly.  
Yuuri soon found out that while much of the city was covered in snow, some parts of it actually had different climates to reflect the fact that New Year’s wasn’t always celebrated on the same date everywhere, and even the season during which it took place differed from country to country in the human world.  
There were a lot of festive trees, reminiscent of those in Christmas Town, but they didn’t all look the same, and their placement varied. Some were inside people’s houses, while others stood outside their doors.  
As Yuuri walked around the city, he encountered a myriad of decorations, shrines, altars, symbols, arrangements. Different music was played, different colors used.  
Yuuri wondered if people in New Year’s were luckier than those living in smaller, more unified holiday worlds, if they were less likely to get bored of the monotony, the way Jack often did. The way Sally did. The way Yuuri himself could certainly understand.  
Yuuri and Sally were only staying in New Year’s for a few days after the competition, but it would take so much longer to cover all of its grounds, let alone experience or understand all of its varying traditions and festivities.  
Yuuri thought that, perhaps, some time in the future, he’d like to visit New Year’s again.

*****

Yuuri returned to Halloween Town to cheers and salutations. He wasn’t sure he deserved them all, as he only placed second, but his fellow Halloween folk didn’t really care that he didn’t come bearing gold. He’d medaled at the very first inter-world competition in a sport that hadn’t even existed in Halloween not so many years ago, while competing in a foreign place against people with far more experience and resources. As far as most in Halloween were concerned, Yuuri deserved all the praise there was to give.  
It wouldn’t long now before Yuuri would be going to the final; but before then, there were 2 other qualifying events. Halloween had participants in both of them. They weren’t quite as good as Yuuri as they’d just started skating recently, but it was a good opportunity for them to participate in a big competition and see what it was like, in case they intended to keep doing so in the future, when their skills improved and they had a chance at winning.  
Yuuri wasn’t sure if he wanted to go and watch the other events in person or merely observe through spy brew, but the dilemma was solved for him as one of the other competitors approached him a few days before the second event with an unexpected request.  
“Would you come with me?”  
Yuuri’s mouth dropped slightly open as he stared at Minami, who stood before him with a begging expression on his face.  
“You...want me to...”  
“I know you’re not really my coach, but you’re as close as I have to a mentor. I’d love it if you came with me,” he said, then quickly added, “but you don’t have to. I mean, it’s only if you want to. I can go on my own too, it’s fine.”  
Minami low-key worshiped Yuuri. Sometimes not so low-key, in fact, but he tried not to let it show too much.  
He’d first discovered figure skating only a few years prior, and soon convinced his parents to let him try it out for himself.  
As soon as the technique for making figure skates became available to everyone in Halloween, Minami had his own first skates made for him. After that he began practicing on one of the frozen lakes that were now sparsely scattered around the town. He fell a lot at first, but he didn’t mind. When he saw what Yuuri did, he knew that if someday he could do the same, it was worth a bit of falling.  
Minami didn’t have the books that Yuuri had on figure skating, nor did he spend all that much time around spy brews watching skaters from Christmas or any other world. For the most part, he watched Yuuri, imitated Yuuri. That was how he became as good as he was now. Which wasn’t very good, but still the best non-Yuuri skater Halloween had to date.  
Despite his mild obsession, however, Minami had never actually spoken to Yuuri before signing up for Worlds. He mostly practiced on his own, and watched Yuuri from afar. Yuuri hadn’t even known there was someone who admired him this much, who cared for figure skating this much. If he’d known, maybe they could have trained together. Maybe Yuuri wouldn’t have felt as alone as he did, but perhaps it was all for the best. After all, if Yuuri hadn’t felt the need to find other skaters elsewhere, he never would have gone to Christmas, never would have known of Victor, never would have improved. And likely, the Holiday World Figure Skating Championship wouldn’t even exist.  
Instead, here they were, Minami finally talking to Yuuri for the first time, asking him to accompany him to his first competitive event.  
Yuuri had no way of knowing just how much this meant to Minami, but he could tell from the boy’s eyes that it certainly wasn’t a frivolous request.  
“Yes, alright, of course,” Yuuri said after a few moments. “I’ll go with you, sure.”  
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Minami shrieked, jumping up and down.  
He wanted to hug Yuuri, but even in his excitement, he knew it would be rude and inappropriate. Maybe someday he’d earn the right to hug Yuuri, but not just yet.

*****

The second event of the World series would be taking place in The Town of Hanukkah.  
Like New Year’s, Hanukkah didn’t have a set weather pattern throughout its territory as the holiday moved around the calendar in the human world and was celebrated in a variety of countries with different climates, but a large portion of the town did have freezing temperatures, and figure skating was a relatively popular sport amongst the town’s denizens.  
There were both inside and outside rinks. Not as many as in Christmas and New Year’s, but enough for the town to be able to easily host a Worlds event without having to go out of their way too much on preparations.  
Minami, Yuuri, Sally, and Jack headed to Hanukkah together a few days before the competition. Jack would be one of the judges, Sally was just going to watch, while Yuuri would be acting more or less in the capacity of Minami’s coach. It wasn't his official position, but he was the one who would accompany Minami in the event arena during the competition.  
While Yuuri had passed his medical evaluation easily, it was a little more difficult for Minami, who was a vampire. Much of the medical professionals conducting the evaluation had never seen a vampire before, but that was why there were experts from different worlds. Once they familiarized themselves with the idea of vampires as a species they were able to evaluate Minami and clear him for the competition.  
His gear and costumes passed the evaluation as well, and soon enough it was time for the short programs to begin.  
Thanks to a bit of luck with drawing numbers out of a hat, Minami would be skating last.  
He was excited and just a little bit scared, but he was there, in the first inter-world competition with Yuuri beside him. It was a dream come true. Even if he hadn’t even known it was a dream to have until a few months prior.  
However, as the other skaters performed their routines, Minami started to get a little insecure. They were good. Ridiculously good. Minami couldn’t hope to compare.  
As he sat by the side of the rink, watching his competition demonstrate their skills and artistry, he turned to Yuuri.  
“Do you think I can win?” he asked.  
Yuuri almost immediately panicked. When he agreed to accompany Minami to the competition, he feared that something like this might happen. He wasn’t very good at pep talks. He could barely convince himself that he was good enough to share the ice with all those other skaters, and though, in theory, it should have been easier to provide encouragement for someone else, at the moment it didn’t seem easy at all.  
He looked at Minami with wide, scared eyes, afraid to say something wrong, afraid to make this experience worse after Minami had asked him personally to come there for support.  
“I don’t know,” he said honestly, after a pause that was all too long, he knew. “I just...don’t know.”  
Minami turned away, looking back at the ice, where Las Posadas’ representative skated her program.  
He got up and walked away, lowering his head. Tiny drops of blood came up to the surface of his eyes, spilling out, drawing red tracks on his cheeks, then falling down to seep into the fabric of his skating costume. 


	11. Chapter 11

Minami stood outside, just around the corner of the arena where the competition was in full swing. He could hear the cheers as the current competitor performed their program.  
He pressed his back against the wall of the arena, then slid down into the snow at his feet. It was cold and damp, but he couldn’t feel that at the moment. He wrapped his arms around his knees and cried.  
Yuuri ran out of the arena, frantically looking for Minami. He didn’t know what he would say, what he could say, what he was supposed to say, but at the very least, he needed to bring Minami back in. Minami’s biology was more resistant to the weather than that of most living creatures, but that didn’t mean it was safe for him to walk around in freezing temperatures. He was still a blood-based creature, and blood could freeze.  
Besides, it wouldn’t be long before it was Minami’s time to skate. If he still wanted to participate, he needed to go back inside.  
The street was dark, lit only sparsely by lamps. Yuuri couldn’t see Minami, huddled near a wall in a tight ball. He looked around, ran up and down the streets surrounding the arena, but there was no one there. So Yuuri went back inside, hoping that Minami had returned to the arena on his own.  
By the cheers and muffled voice of the announcer, Minami could tell that the penultimate performance was about to begin. It was time for him to go back inside if he still wanted to skate. Did he still want to skate?  
Much of his motivation had flagged, but skating had been his passion for quite some time now. Yuuri was his idol. But Yuuri wasn’t everything. If he had to skate without Yuuri’s support, he could do that. If he had to win Yuuri’s faith in him first, he could do that as well.  
So he got up and walked back into the arena, where he saw Yuuri frantically looking around. When Yuuri set his eyes on Minami, his whole body sagged a little in visible relief and he ran up to Minami, taking off his jacket and wrapping it around Minami’s shoulders.  
“Are you alright? Are you cold? Do you need anything?”  
Minami wasn’t sure what he needed. Some blood would be nice, but he’d been told that feeding could be confusing and scary for people in other towns, and besides, he was about to skate, so it would be ill-advised regardless.  
He looked up at Yuuri with a sad, broken smile.  
“I just wanted to be like you,” he said.  
Yuuri looked at him with his mouth hanging slightly open, breath caught around a lump in his throat.  
He wasn’t good at being a role model, or any kind of idol. But there was something else he could be for Minami – he could be his equal.  
“Don’t,” he said simply. “Don’t be like me.” He straightened out, certainty finally returning into his voice. “Because if you qualify at this event, then you’ll be skating against me at the final. And even if you don’t, there will be more competitions in the future. Sooner or later, we’ll compete against each other. So don’t be like me, because I’m not the highest bar there is. No one is the highest bar there is. Be the best _you_ can be.”  
Another crimson tear rolled down Minami’s face, but this time it wasn’t out of sadness.  
He was afraid that Yuuri, the person whose skating he’d been emulating since the moment he set food on the ice, the skater he looked up to, did not believe in him. But that wasn’t true. And more importantly, Minami was starting to realize, it didn’t really matter.  
Yuuri was still his idol, he was still the skater Minami would look up to for as long as he skated. But he was more than that now. He was a fellow skater. Not an unattainable star to gaze upon, but someone to compete against, and maybe even win against. Someday.  
The commentator was announcing that the last short program of the day was about to take place. Minami took Yuuri’s jacket off his shoulders and handed it back to Yuuri, meeting his eyes with a determined expression.  
“Thank you,” he said.  
Yuuri nodded, a tentative smile spreading across his face as he watched Minami square his shoulders walking toward the rink as if we was about to conquer the universe.

Minami quickly put on his skates and stepped out onto the ice, skating around the rink a few times before taking his opening pose.  
His costume was a combination of black, red, and white. Simultaneously dark, like Halloween, yet festive like a holiday is meant to be. The blood stains now drying on the front of his costume somehow enhanced it, like tiny bursts of color decorating the lighter sections of the fabric.  
Minami waited for the music to start with a mischievous smile on his face.  
The audience didn’t quite know what to expect. Some of the people who came to see this event had also been to the one in New Year’s, and having seen Yuuri’s performances they wondered if another skater from Halloween would give another gloomy performance that would make them want to go home and hug their loved ones.  
But despite Minami’s idolization of Yuuri, he wasn’t Yuuri, and their programs were nothing alike.  
The music for his short program was simple, played only by a piano. Minami’s sister had written and recorded it for him to meet the needs of the program he wanted to skate.  
It wasn’t very fast, but it was fun and upbeat, with an edge of danger and mischief.  
Minami could only do one double jump so far, and the rest were singles. The technical difficulty of his short program was very low compared to some of the other skaters present, but he had the audience clapping along as he danced around the ice, twirling and hopping like a performer at a festival.  
Minami loved Halloween almost as much as he loved skating. And to him, Halloween was fun. It was scary and mysterious in a way that made you want to see more, startling in a way that made you want to laugh, it was creepy and playful, dark and exciting. It was, after all, a holiday, a celebration of things that were as much a part of life as the brightness and joy of New Year’s, Christmas, or Diwali.  
By the time Minami was done with his short program, the audience was cheering for him, happy to be entertained.  
His program had been simple, and although the spectators thoroughly enjoyed it, the low technical difficulty still meant that his score would not be very high.  
He was in 5th place after the short program. Not a very good result, but also...the same result Yuuri’d had after his first competitive performance.  
And maybe Minami’s perception of Yuuri had shifted ever-so-slightly, but Yuuri was still his role model, and Minami was proud to finish his first competitive performance with the same result as Yuuri had. More so now than ever he felt like maybe they were, in fact, equals.


	12. Chapter 12

Unlike Yuuri, Minami was happy to go out and see the town while the competition was still in progress. Not that he wasn’t worried, but he felt better walking around and getting distracted. So, he, Yuuri, and Sally went out to see The Town of Hanukkah.  
The first thing they noticed as they walked around town after sundown was how bright it was. There were lights everywhere. Different kinds, in different sizes, mostly from candles and oil lamps.  
Yuuri treated himself to a doughnut, while Minami joined some local kids to play a game he didn’t really understand but thoroughly enjoyed nonetheless.  
Sally had been to most holiday towns that were accessible from Halloween, but to Yuuri and Minami this was all still quite new.  
When Yuuri was young, he didn’t really question the idea of spending a year in preparation for a single holiday, only to see it pass in a day, then start it all over again. Now that he saw other towns and understood their connection to the human world a little better, he started to wonder about many things. He wondered if people could move from one town to another if they felt they belonged better elsewhere. He wondered if people from holiday worlds could live in the human world, and vice versa. He knew of people who had visited the human world, but there weren’t many of them, and he’d never heard of anyone from the human world coming to Halloween. He wondered if a human would even survive in Halloween. He didn’t understand humans very well, but he did know they were quite fragile.  
Minami ran up to Yuuri with an expression of unadulterated excitement on his face.  
“Yuuri! Yuuri! Did you know Hanukkah is celebrated for 8 days? They’re so lucky! I wish Halloween lasted for 8 days!”  
Then he ran off again to listen to locals talking about their holiday.  
The funny thing about holiday worlds was that, in a way, it was always the holiday, even when it wasn’t. It was always Halloween in Halloween, even though Halloween itself was only the one night. The start of Hanukkah wasn’t until a month or so after the competition, but to an outsider visiting its holiday world, it felt like it was always Hanukkah, no matter when you came.  
It was always Christmas in Christmas, always Kwanzaa in Kwanzaa.  
Yuuri was beginning to understand, more and more, why Jack sometimes got so bored and unfulfilled, especially considering how much pressure there was on him as the symbol of the holiday. People living on the outskirts of Halloween could live their lives for the months between one Halloween and another, find themselves occupations, jobs, hobbies. And sure, they would still all be somehow related to Halloween, but at least they had variety. For Jack there was really nothing but the holiday. It was no wonder he got restless.  
Yuuri wondered what it would be like to live a year that had all the holidays in it. Spend a month preparing for Halloween, a month preparing for Thanksgiving, a month preparing for Christmas. Maybe one year he could visit all the towns on their holidays. If their leaders wouldn’t mind.  
After a few hours of walking around the town, they returned to their hotel. Sally left to find Jack, while Minami and Yuuri stayed downstairs for a while longer.  
After the hotel staff found out that Minami was a vampire and educated themselves on what that meant, they were kind enough to procure fresh blood for him from a local blood bank. Minami got really excited, and Yuuri thanked the staff about a dozen times for such admirable levels of hospitality.  
“People here taste amazing!” Minami proclaimed as he sipped his blood through a straw.  
Yuuri smiled sheepishly at the receptionist who watched Minami in a combination of horror, fascination, and confusion.  
They went to their respective rooms a bit later. Yuuri fell asleep a little after midnight, while Minami read through most of the night, having picked up some books from the hotel library. He fell asleep in the early hours of the morning, as he usually did.  
The singles free skate was taking place later in the day, after competitors in all other disciplines were done with their programs and award ceremonies.  
When Minami woke up close to sundown, he felt ready. He loved his free skate program, simple thought it may have been by comparison to those of the other skaters. He was still proud to skate it, here at inter-world level, with his favorite skater by his side.  
If nothing else, he was going to have fun, and share it with everyone who cared to watch.

*****

Minami stood at the center of the ice, his head held high, his hands on his waist.  
When the music echoed around the arena, he started dancing, quick and energetic. He’d been a bit worried when he first thought up this program, because despite its lack of complicated moves, it was quite difficult to perform. His feet changed positions quickly, he was dancing at high speed, turning so suddenly sometimes that he feared he would lose coordination. It was a challenge, but one Minami had chosen to take on. So maybe he couldn’t do triple jumps like Yuuri just yet, but that didn’t mean his program couldn’t be breathtaking.  
The technical requirement for the free skate was to perform at least 1 jump of any difficulty, a step sequence, and at least 1 spin. Of course, most skaters from winter holiday worlds performed several doubles and triples, while Minami could only do 1 double and a few singles, but his program flowed so well and was so exciting to watch that the audience barely noticed its low technical value.  
His costume was very colorful by Halloween standards, though still looked rather dark to those who were used to splashes of green and blue.  
The music to his free skate was again written by his sister, but performed by both her and Halloween’s band. It sounded a bit strange, but also captivating – the piano crisp and perfect, the strings and brass whiny and slightly out of tune.  
Minami took full advantage of the fast, eerie tune as he cut the ice at high speed, turning, hopping, and spinning as the crowd watched in fascination.  
When the music came to its end and stopped abruptly, Minami turned roughly, sending ice shavings flying into the air. The audience gasped in excited awe.  
Minami bowed to cheers and applause. A few multicolored bouquets landed at his feet. He did his best to pick up all the flowers, then skated off the ice to await his score.  
Yuuri smiled at him proudly, and Minami almost didn’t care what his result in the competition would be. He did his best, he entertained the audience, and he made Yuuri proud. He could hardly ask for anything else.  
When the score came in, however, it was almost shockingly high. Much higher, perhaps, than the low technical composition of Minami’s program truly called for. But his program had been so entertaining that the judges had chosen to give him high marks regardless.  
Figure skating wasn’t just sport. It was an art and a spectacle. And even that aside, any sport wasn’t really sport without entertainment. Without entertainment, sport was just...working out. If your program didn’t entertain an audience, then there would be no point in going out in front of one in the first place. If no one cheered and rooted and hoped for a certain competitor to win, if no one cared about the scores earned and records set, then there would be no point in holding competitions at all.  
Yuuri had realized this when he first started skating for the denizens of Halloween – entertaining people with your sport, with your art, added something to it that couldn’t be gained by simply doing it on your own.  
The judges clearly knew the value of entertainment as well, because Minami’s score held steadily in first place until all but 2 of the skaters have finished their programs. No matter how the last competitors performed, Minami would not fall below third place.  
It was his first competitive performance, one in which almost no one expected him to do very well. Yet at the end of the day, he would have a medal hanging over his chest. 


	13. Chapter 13

The two remaining skaters to perform their programs were from Christmas and Thanksgiving respectively.  
Christmas’ representative was very young. Too young possibly, younger than Minami. But the rules of the competition couldn’t outline age limitations very clearly because of how differently people aged in the different holiday worlds. Instead, entrance into the competition was left to the best judgment of the holidays’ leaders and their advisers. And Christmas had decided to send this scrawny kid to represent them.   
They weren’t wrong, because while he was young, he was talented and capable.   
The kid himself had been apprehensive about the whole idea at first, walking around the ice castle, yelling about how ridiculous it was for people from different worlds to skate against each other, that they didn’t need this, they had enough competitions in Christmas, that there was just no point because clearly everyone else was inferior.   
But when he was selected to represent his town, he found himself excited to actually _show_ everyone else that they were inferior.   
It...did not go exactly how he’d assumed it would. Because the skater from Thanksgiving had outscored him in the short program, and had every chance of getting first place after the free skate.   
When the commentator announced him, the skater from Christmas positioned himself at the center of the ice with a grim, determined expression on his face.   
The elaborate musical piece to which he skated filled the arena, and he moved rapidly, cutting the ice in an almost unnerving manner, moving quickly and sharply, as if his life depended on how well he performed each element.  
He performed 2 triple jumps and 3 doubles, which was the highest technical composition so far at the competitions. His spins were so quick and long that is seemed as though he would make a hole in the ice below him.   
His performance was a true spectacle, and when he finally stopped, freezing in his final pose, the audience showered him with gifts and tokens of appreciation.  
His score was high. The highest, in fact, than anything any other skater had received in this competition so far, which technically made it a record, even if the scoring system didn’t have enough history for the records set in it to have all that much value.   
Nonetheless, almost everyone expected this to be the winning performance.

However, when the skater from Thanksgiving took the ice, with his unhurried music and his apparent, overwhelming love for himself, Christmas’ win started to look a bit less like a given.  
His movements were less desperate than those of his predecessor, but they were no less clean, and some of the elements he performed had not been done by anyone else in this competition so far.   
He flawlessly landed 3 triple jumps, one of which was in a combination with a double, and a total of 4 double jumps. He also combined different types of spins, and some of the elements he performed demonstrated admirable levels of flexibility.   
He won. Outscoring Christmas by almost 3 points.  
During the award ceremony, as Minami received his first medal in a figure skating competition, he looked over at the other winners, noticing a myriad of emotions passing across the face of the silver medalist. He went from angry, to regretful, to simply sad.   
Meanwhile the man in first place looked as though he couldn’t have possibly imagined this going any other way, like he deserved every first place in every known world, and it was sort of implied that everyone was supposed to cheer for him and him alone.   
As Yuuri watched the winner throw up some sort of finger sign that seemed to be related to his name, all he could think about was how hard it would be for someone who relied on their own ego this much to deal with an actual loss. 

Though Minami got third place, it was already known that he would not qualify for the final because his score was lower than that of the bronze medalist from the previous event. But Minami was almost relieved. As much fun as it would have been to go to the final in his very first competitive event, he didn’t think he was quite ready.   
Having seen what some of the other skaters could do, he knew that he wasn’t quite up to their level yet. He wanted to practice more, master new elements, become a real rival to Yuuri, and to the other skaters competing. 

Yuuri and Minami returned home to more cheers, bringing another medal to Halloween.   
And though it wasn’t really in any way fair, this all put quite a bit of pressure on the third skater who would perform in the competition. Lunar, who would be going to the third qualifying event was even less experienced than Minami, and though they were excited to go, they knew there was really no way they could actually medal.  
However, no one really thought Minami could medal either, yet here he was with a little round piece of bronze around his neck. So now everyone thought that Lunar could win something as well, and that was not at all realistic for a skater who had only taken up the sport less than 2 years prior.   
Yuuri noticed this when he saw Lunar in the crowd during the celebration of Minami’s win. So he walked up to them and did his best at a reassurance. Except when he stood right in front of Lunar, he didn’t actually know what to saw. He didn’t know if he should be supportive and say they could still win, or tell them it would be fine if they didn’t.   
“Would you like me to come with you?” he asked. “For support?”  
He felt silly about asking as soon as the words left his mouth – who was he even to offer support? He barely knew Lunar, his support was probably meaningless to them.   
“If you want,” Lunar replied. “But I doubt it would miraculously make my skating better.”  
Yuuri sighed, feeling a bit helpless. He wanted to be helpful, but really didn’t know how.   
“You’ll be skating against Victor from Christmas. He’ll take first place, everyone knows that. So...don’t worry about winning or not winning. It’s...not very fair, I guess, but I don’t think anyone can actually beat him.”   
Lunar chuckled a little.   
“This is your pep talk?”  
Yuuri whimpered a little.  
“I’m sorry, I...don’t really know what to say.”  
“It’s alright.” Lunar shrugged. “I think we both know I’m not going to win anything. I just wish everyone else understood that.” They sighed, looking over at their family dancing happily to the festive music. “My parents are already throwing around things like ‘see, no one thought Minami could win, and look at him, you could win too’. I don’t think they understand just how bad I actually am at skating.”  
Yuuri wasn’t sure if his next words were a good idea or not, but he said them anyway.  
“Are you sure you want to go? I...I’m not saying you shouldn’t, I just mean...” He lowered his head, signing silently. “Do you want to go?”  
“I do...or, I did. I liked the idea when this first came up, but there was no pressure then. No one thought we’d win anything, what with Christmas and New Year’s in the running. I just thought we’d go out and have fun. Then you qualified for the final, Minami got Bronze. Now there are expectations, and I can’t deliver.”   
Lunar had considered withdrawing, but that wouldn’t be much better than losing, in terms of how people would react at least. They would be failing to meet those expectations one way or the other, so not competing at all wouldn’t solve anything.  
“You can still have fun,” Yuuri said quietly. “Do you like your programs? Are you happy with them?”  
“Yes. I know they’re weak by comparison, but I do enjoy skating them.”  
“Then...do that. Enjoy skating them.” Yuuri looked around at the people celebrating something that didn’t even exist a year earlier. “I think people are more interested in a spectacle than they are in seeing you win. This level of competition is still very new to us. We have contests here, but they’re designed with a winner in mind. I mean, who else is going to win a contest for Most Blood Drained in a Single Evening if not the vampires?” He felt relieved when Lunar laughed in response. “We spent centuries here not knowing about figure skating competitions and no one knew they were missing anything. If you give people a good show, I don’t think they’ll care if you don’t bring back a medal. They just want to be entertained.”   
Lunar took a deep breath. They were still worried because they weren’t sure if they actually could give people a good show, but Yuuri’s words did take some of the pressure off.  
“Thank you, Yuuri.”  
“Of course. And I’m going with you, if you don’t mind. I’ll cheer from the audience.”  
“Alright.”  
Yuuri was going to go regardless. Because this was the event in which Victor would be skating. Yuuri hadn’t seen him skate in person since that first day that he say him through a window of the ice castle in Christmas. He wasn’t going to miss it for the world.


	14. Chapter 14

A couple of days before the last qualification event, the team from Halloween set out for Valentine’s Day, where the competition would be taking place.   
Lunar, Yuuri, Minami, Sally and Jack all went together. This time Sally was one of the judges, while everyone else simply came to support Lunar.   
Medical examination once again presented some difficulties since Lunar was a shapeshifter, but it was easier and smoother than it had been for Minami because the experts were a bit more prepared this time.   
Most of the medical and paramedical professionals who had volunteered to be on the medical committee for the figure skating contest had thought it would be a fun and educational experience, but none of them had quite expected just how educational it would really be. They saw many new species, new biologies, and even being around medical people from other worlds allowed for quite a bit of knowledge exchange. Of course, much of that knowledge would be largely useless when they returned to their own worlds, but now that bridges were being build between holidays, exchanging scientific knowledge was yet another way for people from different worlds to connect.   
Lunar was instructed not to shapeshift while skating as that would be unfair toward skaters that were unable to do so, but they were otherwise cleared for competition.   
The shapeshifting clause was actually in the competition rules, and Lunar already knew about it, but they figured being reminded about it was something they’d simply have to deal with throughout their figure skating career, if they chose to continue competing.  
On the first day of the competition, Team Halloween arrived at the arena together, then split up to go to their respective positions.   
“You can pick one of us to accompany you backstage,” Jack offered to Lunar.  
“Ah...thank you, I appreciate that, but I really would rather be on my own. I’ll be less nervous that way.”   
“Whatever works for you!” Jack replied with a joyful shrug.   
So Lunar went into the skaters’ room, Jack, Yuuri, and Minami sat down in the audience to watch the contest, while Sally joined the other judges.   
The skaters drew numbers out of a hat to signify their skating order. Lunar drew number 3, which was quite alright by them, because skating either first or last seemed like it would be too much stress, but being close to the middle seemed just about perfect.   
There were many great skaters and this particular competition. New Year’s skater was quite famous in her world. The skater from Independence Day looked like a firework personified. And then, of course, there was Victor.   
The first skater to perform was from Diwali. Everyone watched in awe as she moved across the ice, alternating flowing movements with sharp, precise turns. The technical composition of her program was relatively low, but by now everyone knew that a beautiful performance could still get good scores even if it wasn’t technically complex.   
The skater from Kwanzaa, on the other hand, wowed everyone by performing a triple jump and several doubles right off the bat, in the short program.   
By the time Lunar took the ice, their motivation, which wasn’t all that high in the first place, had dropped farther down. They’d always known their skills were quite low compared to many of the other skaters in the competition, but they also seemed to have lucked into the one event where some of the absolute best skaters from all the worlds were competing. Lunar was afraid of looking utterly ridiculous by comparison.   
They skated out onto the ice feeling rather dejected and a bit pointless.  
But then they heard Yuuri, Minami, and Jack yelling words of support from the bleachers so loudly that everyone in the arena turned to check out the source of the noise.  
“Go, Lunar, go!” Minami yelled.  
“Knock them dead!” Jack joined in.  
“Have fun!” Yuuri added.   
Lunar couldn’t help but remember all the people back home, and what Yuuri had said a few days earlier. It wasn’t about winning. It was about giving people a show and having fun. They could do that.   
The music started, slow and slightly out-of-tune, performed only by the saxophonist from Halloween’s band.   
Lunar wasn’t yet as certain on skates as Minami and couldn’t pull off a quick performance. Instead they moved slowly, gently, almost as if they were half-asleep. Their body was both strong and flexible, which allowed them to perform rather difficult elements even as their mastery of basics was still a little shaky.   
They fell once as they tried to perform a jump, gaining a few worried gasps from the audience, but they pushed themselves back up from the ice far more gracefully than one would expect from someone who’d just collapsed onto a hard, slippery surface.   
Shapeshifters had very good muscles, designed to sustain transformations into other species, and if nothing else, that was incredibly useful when one needed to get themselves off the ice as though nothing had gone wrong.   
When Lunar got up and continued to skate, Minami cheered like it was a great achievement, and Lunar couldn’t help but smile. Maybe they didn’t have much skill yet, but they certainly had great support.   
They finished their program with an unhurried spin as the music died off on a few wailing notes. The audience applauded a lot more enthusiastically than Lunar – or anyone – had expected.   
Strangely enough, despite this being a new competition in a sport that wasn’t even all that popular in a lot of the holiday worlds and didn’t exist at all in others, very few of the competitors actually made noticeable mistakes in their programs. Lunar’s was only a third fall in the history of the competition, and though for Lunar it was embarrassing, for a lot of the onlookers it was a reason to support them. There was something encouraging and hope-inducing about seeing someone fall, but get back up and keep going.   
A bouquet and a few single flowers landed at Lunar’s feet, which surprised them quite a bit, but they picked up the gifts with a grateful bow before skating off the ice to wait for their score.   
The score was...not very good. It placed Lunar in 3rd place out of the 3 skaters that had already skated. It was more than likely that they would only get pushed further down with each next skater taking the ice, but Lunar had expected that to happen.   
What they hadn’t expected was a few audible disappointed sighs that came from the audience when the score was announced. And they weren’t all from Team Halloween. There were other people, strangers, that had hoped Lunar would get a higher score, and that was...almost intoxicating in a way. 

After changing, Lunar joined Yuuri, Minami, and Jack in the bleachers, where they were immediately showered with praise and words of support.  
“How did you do that?” Minami almost shouted. “You rose up like you were pulling yourself up by an invisible rope. You have to teach me how to do that!”   
Lunar smiled, promising Minami to share some tips, and hoped that Halloween denizens watching the competitions back home through spy brews were just as impressed as the ones that sat beside them.   
So maybe they wouldn’t win any medals just yet, but it looked like they’d put on a good enough show. And they certainly did have fun.


	15. Chapter 15

By the time it was Victor’s turn to skate, Yuuri was practically shaking with nervous excitement. He tried to tell himself that it was not a big deal, but it wasn’t very effective, because of course it was a big deal. Victor was one of the greatest inspirations in Yuuri’s life. Getting to see him skate live was undeniably a big deal.   
It was obviously a big deal for everyone, because the audience went absolutely thunderous when Victor appeared on the ice. Many people have come from Christmas to support him, and even in Valentine’s Day, a lot of fans of figure skating knew him, despite a relatively low level of connection between the worlds. True talent crossed barriers, it seemed.  
Victor skated a circle around the rink, looking confident and beautiful, as always.   
He was, in fact, just a little bit nervous. Skating in a competition was nothing new to Victor, but skating outside of Christmas – even being outside of Christmas – was a first time for him. He still believed in his abilities, and he was a lot more excited than nervous, but a part of him acknowledged that this was different from skating in Christmas, and the result could be different.   
He skated to the center of the ice and took his starting position. The audience quieted down, and the music began to play.   
Victor’s music was the most complex among that of all the competitors. His rink had composers on retainer, and an orchestra recorded all the pieces for the skaters. The harmonies echoed around the arena, drawing the audience into the feeling of the performance.   
The melody was light and joyful, not too slow, not too fast. Like a morning on one of the days just before a holiday, when the excitement was in the air, but there was still time before the big celebration.  
He moved with such ease and grace, that it was difficult to look away. Once he’d gained speed, he went into his first jump, a double. Then soon after, a triple-double combo.   
The audience gasped in excitement as he lifted off the ice, then went into a spin as he landed.   
Yuuri watched in awe as Victor moved around the ice, performing elements that were still uncommon or non-existent outside of Christmas.   
The performance was over all too soon. Victor smiled brightly, both relieved and exhilarated now that the short program was over. He bowed a few times, facing different sections of the arena. Flowers and gifts flew to the ice in near-overwhelming quantities. Victor’s fans had really come prepared.   
Yuuri threw a single blue rose onto the ice. He had brought it from Halloween, where flowers that grew in the woods around his lake often turned the same dark blue that came from the magic he used to make ice.   
The rose stood out among the heaps of white and red flowers covering the ice, catching Victor’s attention. He picked it up and smiled, bowing again, hoping that the person who’d given him the unique flower would recognize the gratitude in his gesture.   
Yuuri’s heart beat faster as he watched Victor skate off the ice, eventually setting down all the gifts and flowers except for one. He still held on to the blue rose as he sat down to wait for his score.

*****

Victor placed 1st after the short program, with the skater from New Year’s coming in a close second.   
Single skaters would perform their long programs on the third day of the competition, with the second day dedicated entirely to ice dancers and pairs. This meant that Lunar had the second day off, and Team Halloween – except for Sally who was busy judging – took the second day to explore the town.   
Valentine’s Day had its own kind of festivity that didn’t feel the same as the other towns they’d visited so far. It was mellow, quiet. The holiday itself was more about romance and love than about loud, colorful celebrations.   
Much of the town was painted various shades of red and pink, with some white for contrast. It was largely covered in snow, though some parts were warmer to commemorate the holiday’s closeness to spring and nature’s awakening in the human world.   
As Team Halloween traveled the town’s streets, Lunar tried dried fruit sweets from the stands scattered around the town, while Minami talked to locals, listening in fascination as they told him about the history and traditions of their holiday.  
Jack watched Minami with a smile, thinking that maybe someday, if the relationships between holiday worlds continued to develop, Minami would make a great ambassador.   
After a particularly long conversation with an older couple, Minami rejoined his peers looking both excited and mildly terrified.   
“This holiday is dark,” was all he said.

After walking around the town for a few hours, Team Halloween decided to go and watch some of the pair and ice dance performances at the arena.   
Yuuri found pair performances a little unnerving to watch, especially when the partners started throwing each other up into their air, lifting each other, dancing at such a high speed that it often seemed like they would hurt each other with their blades.   
Ice dancing was a lot more relaxing to watch than anything else as there were no jumps. It reminded Yuuri of when he first started skating, before he made up or learned the more complex elements.   
“Maybe I should do _that_ ,” Lunar said, while watching the ice dancer from Valentine’s Day move around the ice. The love and support for her radiated from the audience in a way that was almost palpable.   
“You don’t like free skating?” Yuuri asked.   
“I do. I mean...I like to watch it. But when I think of mastering jumps, it feels more like a chore than something to actually look forward to. Maybe I’d be happier ice dancing.”   
Yuuri nodded in acknowledgment. To him, mastering jumps was an exciting endeavor. It gave him purpose, and an immense feeling of satisfaction when he was finally able to land a jump cleanly. Despite his anxiety and low self-esteem, Yuuri was quite competitive, and the idea of mastering elements better than other skaters could, the idea of being able to win with his skills filled him with an unparalleled sense of accomplishment.   
But he could also understand that this wasn’t how everyone felt. The beauty of ice dancing, the concentration on the art of dance rather than the complexity of figure skating elements had its own appeal and its own challenges. If that’s what Lunar wanted to do, Yuuri saw no reason not to support them.   
“Ice dancing is the hardest to judge,” Jack said as the next performance was about to begin. “When we were making the rules, we intended for it to be a split into pairs and singles, but there weren’t enough applicants, so we merged them. So now pairs and singles compete against each other, and one world even has a 3-person ice dancing unit.”  
“We saw them in Hanukkah!” Minami remembered. “They won, didn’t they?”  
“They did,” Jack confirmed. “I’m not sure if it’s fair, and it’s really hard to judge when one performance has just 1 person, while another has 3. The end results are very different.”  
“I guess this is all still very unregulated,” Yuuri said in a sympathetic tone, because Jack looked genuinely distressed about his judging experience. “Maybe it’ll get better overtime.”  
“I hope. Perhaps if more people apply in the following years, they could be split into pairs and singles.”  
“I’d rather they weren’t,” Lunar said. “I like that the performances are so different. The dancers choose whether to perform alone, in a pair, or in a group. It’s another thing that makes each performance unique. We choose our music, our choreography, our elements. The more regulations are added, the more alike the performances will become. If ice dancing was split into pairs and singles this year, then that 3-person unit wouldn’t have skated at all. We’d have missed out on their performance because it didn’t fit into competition rules.”   
Jack’s face widened into a smile as he listened to Lunar.  
“Maybe you should be on the judging panel,” he suggested with genuine enthusiasm.   
“Perhaps after I stop skating,” Lunar replied with a shrug.   
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Jack nodded. “Also, we were hoping to include more retired skaters into the committee that creates rules for the competition. We can’t have actively competing skaters there, but once you retire, if you want, I think you’d be a great candidate for a position on the committee.”  
“I’d like that.” 

The ice dancer from Valentine’s Day won, despite being one of the only 2 single ice dancers at the competition. Her skill and presentation were undeniably superior to those of her opponents, and the support of the audience in her home town made it easier for her to skate to her full potential.   
The crowd exploded in happy cheers as the winner received her gold medal.  
The next day Lunar would be performing their long program, but they were already thinking of the changes they’d be making to their training once the competition was over. Because next year they’d be competing as an ice dancer.


	16. Chapter 16

Having placed last on the first day of the competition, Lunar would be the first skater to perform their long program.   
As they skated out to the center of the ice, they found they weren’t nearly as nervous anymore, largely thanks to a new understanding of their sport and future plans that were already brewing in their head.   
This competition was only and ever meant to be a tryout for them, a way to see what competitions were like, and to prepare for a time when they’d be better and more capable of competing at the same level as the more experienced skaters.  
At the very least the competition had done just that, but more importantly it showed Lunar that there were so many more options available, that the rules would likely continue to change for as long as competitions existed, and that the love and perceptions of the audience were strange, fickle, and unpredictable.   
The music began to play, filling the the arena with the melancholic tones of poorly-tuned instruments, and Lunar moved. Their long program wasn’t much more complex than their short one, with only 2 single jumps, neither of which they were certain they’d land.   
Nonetheless, many people in the audience were rooting for Lunar, because, despite how comparatively simple their program was, their lack of experience was largely endearing. There were many people in Valentine’s Day, in Christmas, and New Year’s who skated recreationally, and were far better at it than Lunar was in this point in their life, and yet none of those people would ever consider performing in an inter-world competition. But Lunar did. And while some thought that people with such low levels of skill shouldn’t be competing at all, others appreciated how much courage it took to go out in front of judges and a large audience and perform, even as you weren’t certain if your next jump was going to land you in a heap on the ice.   
Lunar landed their first jump, earning cheers of support from the crowd, but their second jump did indeed send them sprawling across the ice. Still, they got back up, in that unbelievably graceful way granted by shapeshifter muscles, and that was almost more impressive to see than a landed jump would have been.  
They continued their program, moving slowly and carefully, completing their comparatively uncomplicated elements, and finally finishing up with a simple spin.   
When the music stopped they bowed deeply, picking up the few flowers and bouquets that were thrown onto the ice. They smiled as a small plush bat landed at their feet.  
Lunar held on to the toy as they waited for the score to be announced.  
The score was better than what they’d gotten for the short program, but it was still quite low. Their combined score didn’t even beat Victor’s score from the short program. It was unlikely that Lunar would be anything but last by the end of the day.   
A few people in the audience sighed sadly at the result, but Lunar only shrugged. As Yuuri had advised, they had fun. Whatever the result, coming to the competition was worth the while. 

Lunar soon joined the rest of Team Halloween in the bleachers to watch the rest of the skaters together.   
Many of the performances were very entertaining to watch, but the real battle would be between Christmas and New Year’s. Of course, many in the audience didn’t think there’d be much of a battle, believing Victor to be superior, but New Year’s skater also had fans who had come to Valentine’s Day specifically to watch her.   
When it was her time to skate, she waved and smiled at the viewers, skating a few times around the rink before taking her starting position.   
Her music started out slowly, low notes reverberating against the arena walls, but soon it sped up as the orchestral piece became more complex and rich. It was a solemn melody, quite dark compared to some of the more festive music that accompanied the other skaters’ performances. But it fit Sara’s movements perfectly as she skated with effortless certainty, looking almost heroic as her sharp movements synchronized with the music.   
The audience gasped when she landed a combination of 2 triple jumps in quick succession. As she cut the ice with a single blade, holding her other foot above her head with her hands, many of the onlookers rose a little out of their seats. No one else had done that during this competition. No one else could.   
Sara landed 3 more jumps – 2 doubles and another triple. As the music neared its ending, she spun at an alarming pace, changing the positions of her feet and hands without taking a pause. When she finally stopped, the audience exploded with applause, showering her with gifts and flowers.   
Her score broke the currently standing record of the competition, earning more cheers and gasps from her fans.   
But of course, Victor was yet to skate. And while the bar was set high, Victor had been competing in his hometown for years. If there was one thing he was good at, it was winning.

*****

In truth, Victor didn’t care as much about winning as he did about doing something exciting, gaining new experiences, seeing new things.   
He had competed in Christmas for so long, and mostly against the same people, that it had gotten dull and predictable. Now he got to go to another world, skate at a new rink, against people he’d never met, who skated in ways he’d never seen. That was worth far more than any victory or medal he could ever get.   
As he skated out onto the ice, waving at the cheering crowd, he smiled and bowed his head slightly, waiting for his music to begin.   
As he began to skate, the audience went quiet. His long program was technically complex and visually stunning. He also had one of the most elaborate costumes out of all the competitors. It sparked in the arena lights as he made his way around the rink, with grace and ease.   
He performed element after element, jump after jump with the kind of certainty that came with years of experience. When he performed his one triple-triple jump combination, his fans cheered happily.  
His combination was, in fact, simpler than the one Sara had performed, but most of the judges didn’t know this. Though some of them were former skaters or coaches, the holiday representatives on the judging panel had very minimal experience with figure skating and wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between most jumps.   
Victor felt a bit bad for the realization that Sara’s superiority of skill wouldn’t be acknowledged, but there was little he could do about it. This competition was new and exciting, but it was also imperfect in many ways, and all Victor could do was accept it, and know that he could learn quite a bit from his opponents.   
He performed some of the more visually impressive elements as the music swelled, returning at last to the center of the ice where he finished his program on a series of spins.   
As the music stopped, Victor froze in his final pose, then bent down into a deep bow when the audience cheered for him.   
After picking up some flowers and toys that landed on the ice around Victor, he skated off to go and await his score. He smiled a little when his score was calculated and announced.  
He’d won by barely a point. He wasn’t sure if he quite deserved it, really. He would have gladly accepted second place, as that still would have meant qualifying for the final. Of course, he wasn’t about to complain about a win, but the win didn’t mean as much as the experience. Seeing new skaters, new techniques, new worlds – that was truly the best part of this competition. And Victor couldn’t wait to see what would happen in the final. 


	17. Chapter 17

After the award ceremony and the after party, everyone traveled back to their hometowns.   
The final was coming up soon and Yuuri needed to practice.   
Jack was excited to go to Christmas again for a fairly long stay during the final. He invited Minami and Lunar to come along and they gratefully agreed.   
On their way home, Jack and Lunar were discussing the rules and regulation of the competition. Even though Lunar couldn’t be on the official committee, it didn’t mean they couldn’t make suggestions that Jack would later relay to the other committee members for consideration.   
“I think it would be fun if after the competition itself, there was an extra day where skaters could just perform something random with no rules,” Lunar suggested. “I’m sure the longer the competition exists, the more rules it’ll have. It would be fun for both the skaters and the audience if skaters could do a program outside of the competition, with no technical requirements and with minimal regulations.”  
“Oh, that sounds great!” Jack agreed. “They could use props and shapeshift!”  
Sally, Minami, and Yuuri were walking a little behind them. Minami was holding an oversized, red plush heart that he’d bartered for at one of the toy shops. It wasn’t a very realistic heart, but it was bright and soft in a way things in Halloween rarely were.   
He’d gotten it for his sister in thanks for creating the music for his programs. He hoped she’d like it. She’d always had a fascination with the cardiovascular system.  
Sally watched her husband’s animated exchange with Lunar, happy to see him so excited about a new-found interest.   
“I’ve noticed,” Yuuri said quietly to Sally, “that you gave Sara a higher score than Victor.”  
“I did,” Sally said with a small shrug. “I thought she was better.”   
Yuuri smiled, looking down at his feet. He didn’t quite agree with Sally’s assessment of the performances, but he’d always admired her ability to do and say what she believed regardless of whether it went against popular opinion. It was a rare quality amongst holiday denizens whose whole lives were dedicated to a single purpose, and who rarely considered the possibility of even having an opinion of their own. 

Much like Yuuri had hoped, when they returned home, the town’s people cheered for Lunar despite the fact that they’d placed last in the competition.   
Several people were quite upset that Lunar hadn’t been given a higher score, while others were simply grateful for a great bit of entertainment. Many thanked Lunar for being such a great representative of Halloween, which made Lunar a bit uncomfortable considering how poor their result was.   
“I’m sorry I didn’t do better,” they said over and over as people came up to them to congratulate them on the performance.  
“Oh, don’t worry, it’s your first year!” a witch assured.  
“Who cares about scores, you were so Halloween!” a ghoul agreed.   
Yuuri smiled in relief as he noticed Lunar relaxing quite a bit upon realizing that hardly anyone was mad at them for not placing higher.   
Yuuri’s parents emerged from the crowd, hugging him while Vicchan rubbed himself happily against his legs, occasionally jumping up until finally Yuuri picked him up and they all went back to the river.  
Sally and Jack went home, holding hands. Minami was rejoined with his family as well, his sister confused but excited about her fluffy gift from Valentine’s Day.   
Everyone needed a bit of time to calm down from the excitement of the competition, but Yuuri couldn’t even hope for any sort of calm just yet. Because for him the final was coming up, and it wasn’t just something to watch or even attend. He would be competing.   
Sometimes he felt sick with fear and anxiety, other times excitement would take over for a while. The emotional roller-coaster meant that he’d mostly forgotten what calm even felt like.   
His parents did their best by cooking for him and keeping the water in the river at his favorite temperature. Vicchan never left his side, walking beside him wherever he went, waiting by the edge of the ice when he practiced, sleeping next to him at the bottom of the river.   
Yuuri wasn’t sure how he got through the time between the last qualifying event and the final, because most of it felt like a blur of tension and self-doubt, but at last it was time to go to Christmas Town and compete against the best skaters in all of the holiday worlds, including Victor.   
He packed his gear, hugged his family, met up with the rest of Team Halloween and soon enough he was once again getting sucked into the door that led to Christmas.   
As always, it was bright, snowy, and cold. Yuuri took a deep breath and walked carefully through the snow.  
“Hey,” Lunar said quietly after noticing how worried Yuuri looked. “Have fun, remember?”  
Yuuri sighed, attempting to give Lunar a grateful smile, but failing rather miserably.   
Lunar was right, of course, but it was always easier to give advice than to take it. Still, he raised his head, watching his breath turn to steam as it hit the cold Christmas air.   
Maybe he wouldn’t win, maybe he wouldn’t medal, and hell, maybe he wouldn’t even have fun. But he wanted to be there. He wanted to be in this competition, to skate on the same ice as Victor, to show his skating to everyone who cared to see, no matter how terrifying it was. He would do his best, and hopefully, the universe would help him out with just a little bit of luck.

*****

The universe did not help Yuuri out at all.   
On the first day of the competition, Mari came to Christmas to watch Yuuri compete, like she’d planned, but the moment Yuuri saw her, he knew something was wrong. She was pale and sad, and she wouldn’t meet his eyes when he looked at her.   
“What’s wrong?” he asked.  
“It’s...it can wait. You just do your thing, and–”  
“Did something happen back home?” He waited, but Mari just kept her eyes cast downward, not saying anything. “Please, tell me, I want to know.”  
She sighed and finally looked up at him.  
“It’s Vicchan. He...he fell off that cliff by the cemetery. There’s a swamp below it. His bones scattered when he fell, and some went in the swamp, and...we can’t find all of him. I’m sorry, Yuuri.”   
Yuuri’s mouth hung open, and for a few moments he simply stared at Mari, not saying anything.   
Once he was able to regain control of his body, he walked determinedly in the direction of the door to Halloween.  
“I’m going back home,” he said when Mari ran to catch up to him. “I’ll help look for him.”  
“Yuuri, wait, wait!” She grabbed his arm, causing him to pause and face her. “It won’t make a difference. Mom and Dad are looking already. They called in a few other people to help. One more person won’t make a difference.”  
“It could!”  
“Maybe. But probably not. And you’ll miss your competition. You’ll regret it forever.”  
“Don’t you think I’ll regret not going home to look for him?”  
Mari sighed. She put her hands on Yuuri’s shoulders and looked him in the eyes. Yuuri was shivering a little in the cold Christmas air as snow fell quietly around them.  
“Yuuri, listen. If he can be found, he’ll be found, with or without you.”  
“You don’t know that.”  
“He’s a skeleton, Yuuri. It doesn’t make a difference if we find him now or 3 days later. He won’t get any deader.”  
“But he’s alone out there,” Yuuri said quietly, his voice breaking a little as the first tears rolled down his cheeks. “He’s alone, and I’m not there for him.”   
Mari sighed again, closing the distance between them to hug Yuuri as he cried.  
“I understand the urge to go back home now. Mom and Dad told me not to tell you, because they knew you’d want to come home. And I totally understand that, but you’ve been preparing for so long for this competition. I mean...if you want to go back home, I don’t blame you, but you really need to consider what you’re doing before you make any rash decisions.”  
Yuuri took a deep breath and attempted to do just that – consider the situation rationally. But as soon as his mind supplied all the consequences of his decisions, it only made him cry harder as the full weight of the situation crashed down on him.   
He wanted to run back home more than anything, regardless of whether it would make any difference or not. But even if he could throw away the time and effort he’d spent on preparing for this competition, he couldn’t quite as easily disregard the fact that many people counted on him to compete. He was the representative of Halloween in the first inter-world figure skating competition final. People back home counted on him. The event organizers counted on him. If he left now, because of his own personal needs, not only would he be letting down everyone in Halloween who wanted to see him skate for his world, and inconveniencing the event organizers, but he’d be leaving a stain on Halloween’s reputation. Because that’s what everyone would remember. That in the very first inter-world competition, the skater from Halloween simply left on the day of the event with no prior notice, because his dog had gone missing.   
Yuuri sunk down into the snow. Mari sat down beside him, rubbing his shoulder gently.  
The competition was starting in less than 3 hours. And no matter how terribly Yuuri was feeling at the moment, one way or another, he would have to skate. 


	18. Chapter 18

Yuuri could barely pay attention to the other skaters as he waited for his time to go out on the ice. He felt bad about it, but he really couldn’t pay attention to his competition at the moment. He wasn’t even sure if he cared about his own result anymore.  
Well, he did, or at least he knew he would, eventually, but at the moment all he could feel was worry and sadness.  
He was alone in the skaters’ area, stretching and warming up on autopilot. Both Sally and Jack were on the judging panel, while Minami, Lunar, and Mari were in the audience. Yuuri was on his own with his thoughts that really weren’t all that friendly to him at the moment.  
When it was finally his time to perform, he dragged himself out toward the rink and onto the ice, knowing deep down that this performance wasn’t going to be good.  
He struggled to focus his vision, and his limbs weren’t entirely under his control as anxiety and doubt came over him in waves, making it difficult to move.  
He did his best going through his program, but he fell on every single one of his jumps and even his simpler elements looked undefined and blurry. His spins were slow, but to him they were dizzying and disorienting as he forced his body to do things that were hard at the best of times, and nearly impossible in his current condition.  
When the program was over and he stopped, his shoulders sagging and his head lowered, the audience reaction was that of confusion and something like pity. With the exception of Yuuri’s friends, no one in the audience knew why he performed so poorly, so they simply assumed that the pressure of the competition had gotten to him and he simply couldn’t reel in his nerves.  
Yuuri skated off the ice to the sound of lukewarm, scattered applause. He waited for the score because he knew he was supposed to, but he didn’t care to see it. He knew it’d be low, and it didn’t particularly matter how low precisely.  
As soon as the score was announced, he got up and left, walking through the skaters’ area and out into the back rooms of the arena where he found a bathroom, hid in one of the stalls and cried for a long time.

*****

Victor watched the other skaters with the same joy that most of his neighbors experienced on Christmas morning when they opened presents.  
The skaters from his own town and their programs were already familiar to him, but the other qualifying contestants were new, surprising and exciting.  
Victor had a hard time remembering their names, but he would certainly remember their programs. The skaters from New Year’s, Kwanzaa, and Thanksgiving were giving stunning performances, and Victor was among the loudest in the audience, applauding and cheering for his competition.  
He didn’t know Yuuri’s name, remembering him merely as the skater from Halloween, but his performance stood out in its own way as well. After Yuuri fell several times, making the audience gasp in sympathy, Victor wondered what could be happening to him. He’d qualified for the final, so he couldn’t have been that bad at his first event. Something must have happened between then and the final, but Victor knew these things happened. He’d been in enough competitions to know that not every performance was going to show an athlete’s full potential.  
Victor was the last to skate, right after Sara. He was more excited than he had been in years, feeling inspired by the performances of his competitors, but at the same time safe thanks to the support of the audience and familiarity of his home rink, where the competition was taking place. He waved as he skated a circle around the rink before taking his starting position.  
Yuuri had emerged from his hiding place in time to see Victor start his program. However bad he was feeling at the time, he still wanted to see Victor skate. After all, one of the best things about this competition was supposed to be getting to skate on the same ice as Victor. It wasn’t feeling quite as important at the moment, but Yuuri still knew he’d regret it if he missed Victor’s program entirely.  
Victor’s short program was even more beautiful than it had been in Valentine’s Day. The joy and excitement poured off him, and the audience could feel it. Everyone was clapping in the rhythm of his music as he skated, sharing his glee with the whole arena.  
Yuuri watched from the sidelines, feeling detached and isolated. Everyone around him was happy watching Victor, smiling and applauding. But Yuuri couldn’t share the excitement. No matter how much he loved watching Victor skate, at the moment the feelings inside of him were the opposite of joy, and being in a building full of happy people only highlighted his own misery.  
Victor ended his program with a flourish and a wide smile. He waved, collected as many flowers and gifts as he could carry, then got off the ice to wait for his score.  
As everyone had expected, he was ranking first after the short program. The audience cheered at the result, and Victor bowed and waved some more.  
Yuuri walked out of the arena, not bothering to wait for his sister and friends. He went back to his hotel room and crawled into bed, hoping that he could fall asleep soon. The more time he spent unconscious, the sooner this competition would be over, and he could go home to look for Vicchan. 


	19. Chapter 19

Thankfully, the long program was taking place the next day after the short program, so Yuuri didn’t have to wait an additional day.  
Yuuri was the first to skate, having placed last the day before. Unfortunately, he couldn’t just leave immediately after skating, as he had to stay for interviews and group photos that would take place after the competition. Yuuri didn’t really know what photos were exactly as the technology didn’t exist in Halloween, but he knew it was something like portraits, only faster. Well, he was grateful that at least it would be fast.   
Yuuri’s long program went only marginally better than his short. He didn’t fall as much and managed to land 2 of his jumps fairly cleanly, but he still barely managed to hold it together, and the amount of flubbed elements made many in the audience believe that he was injured.   
Sally and Jack were very worried for Yuuri. The judges had been isolated from the athletes on the first day of the competition, before Mari arrived, so they didn’t know the reason behind Yuuri’s poor performances. Even some of the other judges were worried, asking Jack and Sally why the skater from their world fell so much, if he was hurt, if he needed assistance, but they didn’t have an answer.   
Once Yuuri was done with his program and received another low score, knowing already that he would place last, he retreated into the back rooms of the arena to wait for the competition to end so that he could finally go home.   
He watched the other skaters on a screen, knowing that he had no effect on the passage of time, yet hoping that this could all end faster.   
He could barely pay attention to how well the skaters were actually doing. He noticed that the youngest representative of Christmas attempted a jump that was too difficult for him and fell, which made it unlikely that he would medal. The skaters from Thanksgiving and Kwanzaa gave near-flawless performances, but would still likely be outscored in the end due to the fact that the other skaters had more complex programs.   
It was apparent that the podium would be split up between the remaining 2 skaters from Christmas and Sara of New Year’s. Under most circumstances, Yuuri would have been over himself with excitement to see this competition unfold. But of course, the circumstances he was actually in put excitement well out of his reach.

*****

When Mila appeared on the ice, the audience erupted in cheers of support for one of their own. She had a fairly large fanbase in Christmas, being one of the few skaters in town that gave Victor a run for his money. She was the primary reason Victor’s collection of medals and ribbons didn’t entirely consist of first-place rewards.   
Mila and Victor’s skill levels were well-matched, and when one learned a new element, the other quickly caught up. They still both had strong and weak points, but the main reason Victor won more competitions was that Victor was more charismatic and his programs tended to be more popular with the audience. Mila’s programs were often both beautiful and complex, but they had an edge to them that often made the viewers a little uncomfortable. She liked to take risks, and sometimes that didn’t work out too well. And even when it did, people often didn’t like the end result as it only stressed them out to watch her perform dangerous stunts and element combinations. For her fans that was one of the most appealing things about her performances, but while her fans were numerous, they were still a fairly small group compared to Victor’s fanbase, which included virtually everyone in Christmas.   
She’d been told many times by her coaches and choreographers that she needed to make her programs lighter and more appealing to the general population, and she did try it a few times. But in the end, she decided that she would rather lose than skate programs she didn’t really like herself.   
So now she was skating in the first inter-world competition, and she skated the way she liked. Her music was fast and energetic, but with dark undertones. Her feet moved quickly as she danced across the rink, leaving ice shavings in her wake.  
Around halfway through her program she performed a triple-single-double jump combination, which was still fairly rare, and caused the audience to react in gasps and cheers.   
Victor smiled as he watched Mila perform an element that he never quite managed to master entirely. He could do it, but it didn’t look quite as impressive. It required a lot of flexibility and muscle strength, and while he did have both, Mila could bend in ways that looked almost impossible at certain angles, and Victor never ceased to admire that about her.   
She performed 3 more jumps – a triple and 2 doubles. One of the jumps followed a difficult element. Her entry was a little shaky and she was afraid she would fall, but she managed to steady herself, only briefly touching the ice after landing.  
When the music dipped low, she touched the ice, drawing a wide circle with one of her skates, with her hand as the center.  
As the program drew to a close, she went into a spin combination. Spins were one of her weaker points. She could never make them quite as fast as Victor, but she always tried to make up for it by making them more complex, combining several kinds of spins, often ones that were difficult to perform together. That didn’t always help her win, but when she performed them well, it gave her a sense of accomplishment.   
As she finished her program, stopping in the center of the ice in her final pose, the audience erupted with cheers, and her fans showered her with bright red flowers and various gifts.   
She bowed and picked up a few plushies and bouquets, then skated off to wait for her score.  
It put her in first place, of course, but Sara and Victor were yet to skate.   
Mila smiled and waved at her fans. She didn’t really expect to win, she rarely did. She wanted to win, of course, but more than that, she wanted to stay true to herself and skate the way she wanted. At the end of the day, she would always rather be happy with her performance than win a medal.

*****

Sara wasn’t sure what her chances were at this competition. Her program was strong and she knew it well. In her home town, she would have won against just about anyone with this program. But this was an inter-world competition, and that added many factors into the mix.  
For one, many of the judges weren’t figure skaters. They didn’t know that some of her jumps were more technically difficult than the ones her opponents performed, so they judged only on how the program looked. Sara’s coach had suggested downgrading her jumps, performing simpler elements that would look just the same to the untrained eye but would be easier for her to perform, and lower the possibility of failure. Sara considered the idea, but rejected it in the end. She’d trained for a long time to master those elements, she wasn’t about to hide her progress simply because not everyone could appreciate it.   
For two, Sara’s main rivals at this competition were both local, while she was an outsider. It was hard to tell whether that would make a difference or not, but sometimes the support and adoration of the audience could affect both the performance and the score, so Sara was trying to be realistic about the fact that the location of the even could play at least some role in how things would turn out.   
And lastly, Sara still had to perform her program well. No matter how well she knew it or how many times she’d skated it, there was never a guarantee that she’d perform its best version at the actual competition. Winning often wasn’t about who was the best skater, but about who managed to do the best in the few minutes they were given at any given event. 

Sara’s brother was hovering beside her as she was getting ready to skate. He was one of the other New Year’s representatives, but hadn’t qualified for the final. He was only in Christmas now to support her, and she had mixed feelings about that. She appreciated his love and devotion to her, but they’d been inseparable for so long that their bond was starting to become suffocating.   
She sighed and shook her head, chasing away the thoughts about her relationship with her brother. Those were thoughts for another day. Right now she needed to concentrate on her skating. Though, of course, it was a little hard to do when her brother stood beside her and glared dangerously at anyone who dared to approach or so much as look at her. 

At last, it was time for Sara to skate. She stepped out onto the ice and took a deep breath. She loved being on the ice, not only because she loved skating and performing, but because it was an escape from everything else in her life. For as long as she was performing, nothing else mattered, nothing else would interfere with her thoughts, she was alone and at peace with herself.   
The music started and she launched into her program. The melody was dark, darker even than Mila’s. It started out slow, but soon sped up and expanded, giving a perfect accompaniment to Sara’s agile movements.   
She looked like a warrior heading into battle, certain of her actions, prepared for anything.   
As her famous triple-triple combination came up, she landed it cleanly, feeling proud and accomplished, despite the relative irrelevance of the achievement. Maybe she wouldn’t get extra points for the complexity, but she knew what she was doing, and so did her competition.   
As she moved across the ice on a single blade, with her other foot held over her head behind her, she looked even more stunning than she had at the qualifying event. The audience watched in silent awe as she performed element after element with effortless elegance and strength.   
She landed a triple-single-double combination next, similar to Mila’s, though with slightly simpler jumps. As she danced from one side of the rink to the other in a series of intricate steps, no one could look away. Even Yuuri, who could barely concentrate on the competition at the moment, was momentarily distracted from his thoughts as he watched Sara on a screen. Her performance was captivating in so many different ways.   
She landed 2 more jumps – a double and a triple – though the jumps probably weren’t the most impressive part of her performance. It was the certainty in each movement, the way her skating went with the music, the way she held herself as if all these complex elements were no harder than breathing.   
As she finished her last series of spins and stopped in her final pose, the audience showered her with cheers, flowers, and gifts.   
When she stepped off the ice with and armful of bouquets, Victor, who was preparing to go out on the ice, greeted her with a bright smile.  
“Tough act to follow,” he said playfully.  
“That was the plan,” she responded in the same manner.   
Sara’s brother held onto her for dear life as her score was announced. She’d beaten Mila’s score by almost 2 whole points.  
Victor looked out over the ice where he was about to skate the last program of the competition. Sara’s program was a hard one to beat indeed. And Victor couldn’t be happier.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a relatively long chapter, while the next is going to be quite short. I could have broken down the segments differently, but this just felt optimal to me.

When Victor stepped onto the ice, the cheering from the audience reached new levels of volume.  
Not only was Victor the favorite of the Christmas skating world, but he was competing in an inter-world competition now, which made his supporters feel like they should cheer for him especially hard this time.  
He smiled gratefully, waving as he skated around the rink a few times before taking the starting pose for his long program.  
As Victor prepared, the audience quieted down, waiting for the show to begin.  
Those few moments of silence have always been hard for Victor. He knew they were probably hard for everyone. The tension in those seconds just before the music began was almost palpable. It was every expectation and anticipation pressed down into a few moments of time, which sometimes felt endless.  
As the music began to play and Victor started to skate, he felt himself relax a little.  
His program was a combination of grace and joy, beauty and fun. A lot of Victor’s competition programs were geared heavily toward engaging the audience, and this one was no different. Victor’s costume sparkled in the arena lights as he performed, covering as much of the ice surface as possible, coming in close proximity to every section of the bleachers at one point in his program or another.  
His first jump was a triple, masterfully executed. A sequence of elements followed, enthralling the audience. Some of the elements that Victor performed were quite easy, but they were visually impressive and still unknown outside of Christmas, which made for great entertainment, especially for the visiting spectators who’d come from other worlds to see this competition.  
When Victor went into his triple-triple combination, he decided to take a risk and attempt to replicate Sara’s jumps. His coach had advised him not to, but Victor was alone on the ice now and could do as he saw fit.  
The first jump went well, but the second was much harder. Victor had only recently started practicing it and still wasn’t landing it consistently. His landing was off, and he fell, his knee touching the ice. The audience gasped, but their alarm was soon replaced by supportive cheers as Victor lifted off the ice elegantly and continued his program.  
It was always a little hard to get back in the flow of the program after falling, but Victor knew his program well and quickly put his movements back in synch with the music.  
His 3-jump combo was a double-single-double, but the second double was one of the more complex jumps currently performed, so the combo looked every bit as impressive as Sara and Mila’s combos, which had more overall rotations.  
As the music became more upbeat and cheerful, Victor performed a sequence of steps, moving from one end of the rink to the other, smiling all the while. The audience began to accompany his performance with rhythmic applause, which continued for the rest of his program.  
He performed 2 more jumps before getting back to the center of the ice to finish his program. Victor’s spins were as impressive as ever, fast and sharp, almost dizzying to look at. He saved his most stunning spins for the end of his program, mesmerizing the audience with his movements.  
When he finally froze in his final pose, the roar of the audience was deafening. Victor bowed deeply several times, facing different sides of the arena. He continued to wave for a while as the audience cheered, chanting his name. Eventually he knew he had to get off the ice, so he collected as many flowers and gifts as he could and skated to rink exit to wait for his score.  
His coach didn’t look very happy, and Victor knew why, of course. That flubbed jump would likely cost him the win. If he’d simply gone for the simpler combination, many of the judges wouldn’t even know that the combination was technically less complex than Sara’s. Instead he took a risk and failed, but he didn’t regret it. He wanted to win because he deserved it or not win at all.  
Though Victor had placed first after the short program, he had been ahead of Sara by less than a point then, which didn’t give him enough of a cushion in points for his long program. With his failed jump and less complex triple-jump combo, Victor expected he’d score much lower than Sara for the long program and wouldn’t win, but he didn’t mind. It only meant that he would have something to strive for the next year.  
When the score came in, however, the crowd exploded in cheers louder than Victor had thought possible. He won. His long program score beat Sara’s by over a point.  
His coach squeezed his shoulder briefly, muttering a quiet “congratulations”, before getting up and walking away, leaving Victor to stare at his score, uncertain of how to feel. He’d won, despite the lower technical complexity of his program, despite his failed jump, despite Sara’s far superior performance.  
He’d won, and he knew he was supposed to feel happy, yet all he could think was,  
“Why?”

*****

Victor smiled through the award ceremony, like he had many times before.  
He flashed more smiles as all the finalists had to pose for photos together. He watched the other competitors, trying to figure out what they were feeling. Sara seemed unfazed by getting 2nd place, but she’d been competing most of her life as well, back in her hometown. Victor didn’t know if she truly didn’t mind the results, or if she was just good at hiding her emotions in front of the cameras, just like Victor.  
In truth, Sara, had mixed emotions about how the competition had turned out. She had done her best in that long program. She really thought she had a shot at winning, and after Victor fell on his combo, her coach had all but congratulated Sara on her impending win. And then...well, Victor won. But Victor was competing in his home town, the audience loved him more than anyone else at this event. That was a new factor to competition that none of the finalists had ever experienced before, having only ever competed in their own towns, against other skaters from the same town. Competing on an inter-world level had different dynamic, and what that meant precisely was yet to be discovered. Perhaps some of those dynamics wouldn’t be very fair, or perhaps they would simply feel unfair when they worked against you.  
Immediately after the score was announced, Sara felt just a little bit wronged and robbed, but now as the finalists were posing for pictures and she watched Victor crack smile after smile at the cameras, she noticed that when no one was shaking his hand or pointing a camera at him, he looked lost and confused. So Sara thought, perhaps, he was as much a victim of the new, confusing competition mechanics as anyone else.  
Victor looked around at the other finalists. Many of them he didn’t know at all.  
Mila looked radiant and fierce as ever. She had lost to Victor many times in the past, and never let it get her down. It wasn’t that she was used to losing, she never intended to get used to losing. But whatever medal she got, she wore it proudly, knowing that she stayed true to herself.  
Victor smiled at Yuri, the youngest representative of Christmas, but received only a scowl in return. He didn’t know the skaters from Thanksgiving or Kwanzaa, and wasn’t sure if he should approach them. It was easier to come up to someone you didn’t know and congratulate them on a win than it was to introduce yourself when you were the winner. Someone else’s victory was a better ice-breaker than your own.  
When Victor’s eyes fell on Yuuri he could see that he looked utterly devastated, and though Victor didn’t know him, he had seen his disastrous performance, and could understand why smiling for pictures wasn’t the most pleasant thing for him at the moment.  
Of course, Yuuri barely cared about the photos or the medals or the competition. He wanted to get this all over with so he could go home and help his parents look for Vicchan. He didn’t know if there was even a point in that anymore. So much time had passed that if they hadn’t found him by now, they probably never would; but the waiting, the uncertainty, the helplessness were tearing him apart.  
Yuuri hoped that once the photo session for the finalists was over, he could go home. Unfortunately, that was not to be. Because once the judges were done with the duties, Jack came in like a snowstorm, determined to cheer Yuuri up, whether he wanted to or not.  
After the official part of the competition was over and done with, there was an after party. It had been suggested by the representatives and Christmas and New Year’s, as they always had banquets after sports competitions in their towns. They were a good opportunity for people to mingle at get to know each other, and for potential sponsors to meet the athletes. In towns where figure skating was immensely popular and people dedicated their whole lives to it, athletes required financial support, which often came in the form of sponsorships in exchange for representation of their gear and products.  
This was all new and foreign to both Yuuri and Jack, but an after party was still a party, and Jack, who was still completely unaware of the cause for Yuuri’s bad performance and emotional state, had every intention to take Yuuri to that party and get him to have fun, one way or another. And when Jack was determined to do something, it was very difficult to stop him. After all, he once had his whole town celebrate a holiday they’d never heard of before just so he could experience something new.  
Before Yuuri knew what hit him, he was being dragged to a banquet hall with Jack’s cheerful voice cutting off any protests he attempted to put forth.  
“Jack, I really need to go back home–”  
“Oh, nonsense! It’ll be fun! You need some fun right now.”  
“But I–”  
“We don’t have to stay the whole night, but this is a party! Look how colorful everything is! Here!” Jack shoved a glass of champagne into Yuuri’s hand. “It’s a popular drink here. I hear it can make you happy! Try it.”  
Yuuri didn’t want to try it, he just wanted to leave. But Jack was trying to hard to make him happy that Yuuri had a hard time saying no. He looked around for Sally, hoping that she could intervene and get him out of this, but she’d stayed behind to talk to the competition rules committee and likely wouldn’t join them for a while still.  
“Just...just for a little bit, okay?” Yuuri said after a deep sigh of resignation. “And then we’ll go home. Please, Jack, I really need to go home.”  
“Of course, of course! Just for a little bit!”  
Jack was hoping that the festive mood of the after party would rub off on Yuuri and he would feel better. Sadly, Jack’s determination often made him oblivious to the fact that what he was doing maybe wasn’t such a great idea after all.  
For lack of better options, Yuuri tried the drink that Jack had offered him. After a few minutes of awkwardly standing by the side of the room and sipping the weird-tasting bubbly drink, he felt himself relax a little. So he took another drink from the passing waiter. And then another, and another, until he could barely feel the sadness or the fear or the guilt anymore, and everything just felt fun, and bright, and hilarious.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the room, Victor was cradling his own glass of champagne, not really drinking it, just looking at it sometimes. He’d already spoken to a few sponsors, and knew he would likely have to speak with a few more, but at the moment he was on his own, looking around the room, trying to understand what it was he was feeling exactly. A win at an inter-world competition meant that he would only gain more fame and financial support, but when he didn’t feel like he deserved it, everything seemed wrong.  
When all this started, he felt so excited and inspired, but now everything seemed hollow and pointless.  
Victor’s coach had just finished talking to a sponsor and was now joining Victor in his silent observation of the room. They stood in silence for a few moments. Victor looked into his glass, watching the last bubbles pop, leaving the drink flat and disgusting.  
“I didn’t deserve this win, did I?” Victor said quietly.  
“No,” Yakov replied simply.  
“Then what’s the point?”  
Yakov didn’t reply. After a while he walked away, leaving Victor once again alone with his thoughts. The night went on, people came up to talk to Victor, and then they left, but his sadness and confusion remained unchanged.  
Yuri, one of Victor’s rinkmates who had also competed in the final came up to him during one of his solitary moments. Victor had a quiet respect for Yuri’s dedication to the sport, but still found it a little hard to take him seriously because of his age and size. He knew one day Yuri would become a fierce opponent, but he still has a way to go before he could be quite on the same level as Victor.  
“Why are you moping, old man?” Yuri said.  
“What makes you think I’m moping?” Victor said with a bright smile.  
“Oh, please. I’ve known you for years. I know which smiles are fake.”  
Victor sighed. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to discuss his emotions with an angry teenager known for lacking tact. But he didn’t have a lot of options.  
“I don’t think I deserved this win.”  
There was a pause before Yuri replied.  
“Seriously? You’re moping because you won?”  
“Because I won unfairly.”  
“That’s...” Yuri paused, considering. He saw the programs, and he’d be lying if he said he completely disagreed with Victor’s assessment. But he didn’t know what to do with that exactly. “You _won_. Shouldn’t you be happy?”  
“Would you be happy if you won unfairly?”  
He turned to look at Yuri. They locked eyes for a moment, staring at each other. Yuri’s doubt and confusion were obvious in his eyes, and he looked away.  
“Well, shouldn’t you...I don’t know, say something?”  
“To whom? The judges? The committee? What would that achieve? You think they’ll call everyone out back to the rink and rehash the results? Can you imagine the reaction to that? That wouldn’t do anyone any good. And I doubt Sara would be happy about getting a win that way even if they did change their minds. And they probably wouldn’t.”  
Yuri just stared out at the room, processing this. He knew Victor was right. At one point or another, almost every competitive athlete felt like the results were unfair. And more often than not, not much could be done about it. Apparently, that didn’t just apply to losing.  
“Okay,” Yuri said quietly. “I guess...you have the right to mope.”  
Victor only hummed in response, taking a sip of his stale champagne and cringing at the taste. Yuri stayed beside him, keeping him company. An unhappy loser and an unhappy winner, moping silently together.

*****

Sara never particularly liked after parties, but she recognized their necessity. Today, however, she was glad to escape to the banquet, because her brother didn’t have an invite and wouldn’t be able to come.  
Sara felt bad about being glad to escape from Micky, but his usual overprotectiveness of her was going into overdrive after she didn’t get 1st place that he obviously felt she deserved. He was screaming at their coach, demanding that some sort of recount be held, even though everyone, including their world’s representatives on the judging panel, told him that there was no mistake, and this was simply how things had turned out.  
It would take Micky some time to accept the results of the competition, so for a while he’s simply be angry and loud, and Sara was glad to be going to the banquet instead of watching his tantrum.  
She spoke to a few sponsors, and some of the other skaters. When her champagne glass had gone empty, Mila appeared at her side with a fresh glass she’d picked up from a waiter and handed it to Sara with a smile.  
“Your performance was amazing,” Mila said. “You should have won.”  
“Thank you,” Sara replied, taking the glass from Mila’s hand. “I could say the same for you. Your programs were a thrill to watch.”  
Mila smiled, clinking her glass against Sara’s softly. Delivering a thrilling performance has always been Mila’s main goal, so that was just about the best compliment she could get.  
She considered sharing her own experience of losing to Victor, sometimes seemingly for no other reason than that he was more popular, but in the end she decided against it. It was what it was, sometimes results didn’t seem very fair, but all you could do was accept them and try even harder next time.  
“That triple-triple combo you did,” she said, “I’d never seen anyone land it before. Victor tried and failed. How long had it taken you to land it?”  
“I’d say it was about half a year before I could land it cleanly almost every time.”  
“Your coach must be quite good.”  
“I have no complaints.” She took a sip of the champagne. “Are you unhappy with yours?”  
Mila looked around the room, seeing Yakov in a corner, watching Victor and Yuri silently.  
“He’s not bad, but he’s more concentrated on Victor. Which I get – Victor wins...everything. He’s everyone’s favorite. Everyone else is often treated as supplementary.”  
“Have you considered changing coaches?”  
“I have. He’s not my first coach, but he’s considered the best in town. I’ve already worked with the second and third best, and I’m not sure what the next step for me would be if I were to leave Yakov’s rink.” She sighed quietly. “Figure skating is popular in Christmas, but the town is still quite small, and there’s only so many coaches you can work with before you just...run out.”  
Sara looked at Mila, tilting her head slightly to the side with a small smile.  
“Then perhaps you should look for options elsewhere.”  
Mila’s eyes lit up as she thought of the possibilities, but then...she wasn’t sure if this was even possible.  
“Do you think they’d let me leave? It’s unprecedented.”  
Of course, the fact that no one had ever done this before only made Mila more excited about the prospect, but she didn’t want to get her hopes up if the holiday leaders would decide that going to a different world long-term wasn’t an option.  
“Maybe if you trained elsewhere but still represented Christmas they wouldn’t care?” Sara suggested. “We are at a post-competition banquet. If there was ever a good time and place to look for support and sponsorship for a project like that, this is it.”  
Mila’s looked around the room with an excited and slightly terrifying smile as she considered what to do next. She’d have to talk to the holiday leaders about it eventually, but first she needed to see if this idea was any good, if she could find support.  
“Do you think you could introduce me to your coach?” she asked Sara.  
Sara smiled brightly, set her glass on a nearby table, and motioned for Mila to follow her.  
“Of course.”

*****

Victor watched people mingle, watched the other medalists talking to each other, to sponsors. He saw Sara and Mila having a lively conversation, then going off to talk to other people. They’d stood below him on the podium, but seemed much happier now than he was.  
He wondered if he should get fresh champagne. Maybe some alcohol could mellow him out and make him feel better. But that would be temporary. The next day, he’d wake up with the same dull ache in his chest.  
This competition had been a source of excitement and inspiration to him, but now all of that seemed to have gone down the drain. If he was going to win no matter who he skated against, no matter where, and even when he was inferior to the other skaters, then what was the point? What was the point of improving and progressing when in the end he’d win even if he fell, even if his program was worse, even when his opponents were clearly more deserving?  
He didn’t know if this would blow over and he would feel better once some time has passed, but at the moment the world seemed gray and his career seemed almost pointless. Whatever inspiration he’d thought he’d found was dead and gone.

And then it happened...  
The crowd parted as one of the other finalists stumbled out into the middle of the room with a bottle of champagne in his hand. His tie was loosened and his shirt unbuttoned. He looked flushed, reckless, and utterly captivating. He looked around the room, searching, searching, until he finally found Victor, standing silently by the wall. Their eyes met, and Victor’s whole world tilted on its axis.


	21. Chapter 21

One of the reasons that Yuuri loved skating as much as he did was that it helped clear his head. The combination of physical and mental concentration that skating required often helped to drive off his anxiety and intrusive thoughts in a way that nothing else had ever been able to.  
Except for, apparently, alcohol.  
While other skaters spent their time at the banquet talking to sponsors, coaches, and other skaters, Yuuri spent several hours gradually getting progressively more and more drunk. After several flutes of champagne, the worries and fears that had been dominating Yuuri’s mind were a distant presence in the back of his head, and the world seemed so much brighter and simpler to live in.  
Of course, alcohol didn’t just drive off Yuuri’s anxiety and negative emotions, it also completely shut down his common sense, rational thought, and seemingly all of his filters.  
Some say that alcohol brings out our true selves, others believe it simply brings out the worst in people. What exactly it brought out in Yuuri was hard to tell.  
When he was so drunk that concepts of impoliteness and impropriety became rather vague, he abandoned flutes and started drinking right out of the bottle. He loosened his tie and popped some shirt buttons open, and suddenly it seemed like a marvelous idea to dance.  
Aside from Jack, who’d brought him there and then disappeared into the crowd, Yuuri didn’t really know anyone at the banquet, not personally. He knew the other skater’s names and where they were from, he’d seen most of their programs, but that was about it.  
He did, however, know a lot about Victor. Too much, really. He’d watched and idolized Victor for so long that it often seemed like he knew him. And now in his inebriated brain, the difference between knowing everything there was to know about Victor and knowing him personally wasn’t as defined as it usually was.  
Yuuri looked around the room, finally setting his eyes on Victor. When their eyes met, he smiled, then walked over to where Victor stood by a wall. He took one last sip out of his bottle, then set it on a nearby table.  
“Dance with me,” he said, looking Victor in the eyes.  
Yuuri wasn’t trying to be seductive or alluring or intimidating or intriguing or anything else really. He just wanted to dance with Victor.  
But when Yuuri looked Victor in the eyes, drawing him out of his sad, confusing thoughts and into something strange and unexpected and thrilling, Victor could feel excitement coursing through his veins once again. Victor had all but forgotten about Yuuri, having momentarily felt bad for him after his failed programs, then moving on to think of other things. But now Yuuri was right in front of him, flushed and smiling, his eyes shining, his hand extended toward Victor in invitation.  
Victor had seen many drunk people in his life. Some of them were fun to be around for a while, others were annoying and dangerous and disgusting. But something about Yuuri was like nothing he’d ever encountered before. Perhaps it had less to do with alcohol and more with Yuuri himself, Victor didn’t know. But he knew he wasn’t about to turn this offer down.  
He turned to Yuri for a moment to whisper a request.  
“Could you get us some music?”  
Yuri scowled, but it was more for show. In truth, this banquet was dull and sad, and Yuri was rather excited to see how this new development would turn out.  
“Fine,” he said through his teeth, then walked off to find the source of the boring, generic tunes that had been filling the room up to that point.  
Since no one was really paying attention, it wasn’t hard for Yuri to override the accompaniment with something a little more upbeat.  
Meanwhile, Victor took Yuuri’s hand and was glad to be led out into the middle of the room for whatever was going to happen next.  
As soon as the faster songs began to play, Yuuri started to move, swift and elegant despite his level of intoxication, and Victor followed suit, joining Yuuri in dance after dance.  
They were from different worlds, their experiences with the art of dance were vastly different, and yet it wasn’t long before they learned to move together in a way that seemed almost effortless, matching and mirroring each other’s moves.  
As the evening progressed, more people joined in the fun. Several impromptu dance-offs took place, with Yuuri winning far more of them than one would expect from someone who’d consumed several bottles of champagne.  
After the dance party had been going on for a while, Mila finally managed to convince Sara to dance with her. Their dance together quickly drew everyone’s attention, as Mila demonstrated her significant strength when she lifted and twirled Sara with ease, while Sara easily followed Mila’s cues thanks to her immaculate sense of balance and flexibility.  
The banquet didn’t start well for many of the attendants, but with a single impulsive decision, Yuuri had turned it into something else entirely, something that was actually fun and exciting even for those who’d arrived expecting nothing but boredom. Even some of the sponsors and holiday representatives joined in the fun. Admittedly, their dance moves weren’t quite as impressive as those of the athletes, but they didn’t need to be good at dancing in order to enjoy it.  
The holiday representatives who’d stayed behind to discuss competition rules soon joined the banquet, and Sally was reunited with Jack just as a slow song started, allowing them to dance together. Sally wasn’t a very good dancer as her equilibrium was so bad she often had trouble walking, let alone dancing, but Jack had enough grace and balance for the both of them, and the slow melody was simple enough for them to follow together.  
Somewhere along the way, one of the banquet waiters took over the music selection, taking requests and playing the best available music to fit the needs of the guests.  
After a few slow songs that allowed everyone to rest and calm down, more dance-offs followed. Yuri challenged JJ, the skater from Thanksgiving, whom he’d been mad at ever since losing to him at his first qualifying event. But JJ turned the challenge down, claiming it to be beneath him. This served only to make Yuri angrier, and though he’d been annoyed with the inter-world competition after the way it turned out for him, he now couldn’t wait to prepare for next year, just so he could go up against JJ again, and this time beat him.  
Victor and Yuuri stood off to the side, waiting for their turn to take the floor, with Yuuri’s arms wrapped loosely around Victor. Their own planned dance-off was good-natured and had no ill emotions to fuel it. They simply enjoyed dancing with each other, whether it was in tandem or facing off to see who could do better.  
“Are all the rivers in Christmas frozen?” Yuuri asked, his words slurred slightly. “My parents live in a river, have you ever seen a river that isn’t frozen? You should come visit my parents’ river, it can be so warm.” He giggled slightly, touching Victor’s shoulder with his forehead. Before Victor had a chance to respond, Yuuri looked up suddenly, his eyes lighting up with an idea. “I know! If I win the dance-off, come to Halloween and be my coach! I’ve never had a coach before, and who better to coach me than you!” He looked at Victor hopefully, his reddened face spreading in a bright smile. “You’ll do it, won’t you, Victor? Be my coach!”


	22. Chapter 22

When Mari first found out that Yuuri had been dragged to some sort of banquet, she wasn’t sure what to think. She hoped it might be a good distraction for him, but Yuuri wasn’t a particularly sociable person, and at the moment he was stressed out and just wanted to go home, so this would in all probability be a terrible experience for him.  
As hours passed and Yuuri was still at the banquet, Mari became more and more worried. She didn’t know whether Yuuri was staying of his own accord, or if he was held there through some sort of obligation, but knowing how much he wanted to go home and search for Vicchan, she knew he’d hate himself for every second he wasn’t back in Halloween.  
Mari was waiting for Yuuri by his hotel room door. He’d packed in advance in hopes of leaving the moment he was allowed, but hours later, Mari was still waiting, getting progressively more worried and angry.  
When Yuuri finally showed up, he was accompanied by Sally and Jack who helped him to stay upright as he was wobbling and seemingly half-asleep.  
“What’s wrong with him?” Mari asked.  
“I believe people here refer to this condition as ‘drunk’,” Sally explained.  
“He drank a lot of alcohol,” Jack added.  
Alcohol did exist in Halloween, but it wasn’t very common because people in Halloween had varying biologies, and many weren’t affected by alcohol at all. Yuuri had never encountered the substance before, and this was his first experience with it.  
“Yuuri, are you okay?” Mari asked, trying to look her brother in the eyes, which were currently unfocused and half-closed.  
“I’m fine,” he slurred out in response.  
“Let’s just get him inside and let him sleep,” Sally suggested.  
“No, we need to take him home,” Mari said firmly.  
“Why?”  
“He probably doesn’t remember this right now,” she explained, expecting her brother to lose consciousness at any moment, “but he’s been trying to go home since before the competition started. He didn’t even want to be at the competition to begin with.”  
“What, why?” Jack asked, his eye sockets twisting in a perplexed expression.  
“Our dog went missing. He wanted to go home and help look for him. He stayed because he didn’t want to let anyone down, but he’s been waiting to leave since the moment he found out.”  
“Vicchan’s missing?” Sally said.  
“He fell off a cliff and we can’t find all of his bones.”  
“Is that why he did so poorly at the competition?” Jack asked, starting to feel guilty about dragging Yuuri to the banquet in the first place.  
“Yes, and... I don’t think he’ll be very happy to wake up tomorrow morning still in Christmas Town. So, just...let’s take him home, okay?”  
“Yes, alright,” Sally agreed. “Can you take his bags? Jack and I will help him walk to the portal.”  
“Right.”  
Walking a very drunk and only semi-conscious Yuuri to the portal through the snow at night was no easy fit.  
Once they made it through the portal, Yuuri threw up, then promptly fell asleep. Jack and Sally carried him the rest of the way to the river.  
Thankfully, there was no greeting party like there had been after the previous events. Jack had warned Yuuri’s fans that the final required skaters to stay back for photographs and interviews, so it was possible Yuuri wouldn’t return right away. Some of his fans were still planning on throwing a homecoming party for him once he came back, to demonstrate that his poor performance at the final didn’t mean he wasn’t still loved in his hometown, but it was the middle of the night now and the woods were deserted.  
Yuuri’s parents panicked a little when they saw the unconscious Yuuri being carried back by Jack and Sally, but Jack quickly explained what was happening, and they put Yuuri into his bed in the shore house.  
Jack stayed by the river to catch up with Yuuri’s parents, while Sally returned to Christmas to make sure Minami and Lunar were alright. They’d stayed back at the hotel after the competition, and Sally planned on letting them spend the night there, then accompany them home in the morning.  
The excitement of the night was over, Yuuri was snoring quietly in his bed, and Jack had gone back to his own home. Mari went to bed as well, but had a hard time falling asleep. She was tired, but worried about how Yuuri would feel when he woke up. Still, nothing would be happening for the next few hours, and there was nothing left to do but wait for morning.

*****

Yuuri woke up confused and disoriented. His head hurt, and it took him a moment to realize that he was in his own bed in Halloween, even though he couldn’t remember getting there.  
He moaned a little when noise from outside made his head hurt even more.  
“Hey, kiddo,” his father said quietly, handing Yuuri a glass of water.  
Yuuri took the offering gratefully, downing the whole thing in a few large gulps.  
“What...what happened?” he asked.  
“Apparently, you were introduced to alcohol at a party after your competition,” Toshiya said. “You passed out after a while, so Jack, Sally, and Mari brought you home.”  
Toshiya was quite familiar with alcohol, having tried it himself at an earlier stage in life. He tried to stay away from it now as he knew it turned him into an uncontrollable mess that didn’t remember anything the next day. He felt bad for his son, who was now suffering a headache and looking utterly lost.  
“I don’t remember anything.”  
“It’s alright, kid, you’re home now.”  
As Yuuri’s brain gradually got back to work, he started to recall the events of the past few days, and almost wished he didn’t. The last thing he remembered was going to the banquet with Jack, hoping that it would end quickly, and then...he woke up in his bed back in Halloween.  
And then, of course, he remembered the reason for his poor performance at the competition, and why he’d wanted to go home as soon as he could.  
He looked at his father hopefully.  
“Did you find him?” he asked. “Did you find Vicchan?”  
His father looked away, and Yuuri knew.  
“Sorry, son,” Toshiya said kindly. “We found most of him, but not his head. We think it’s sunk into the swamp, and...well, there’s probably no way to get him back out now.”  
The finality of his father’s words sent Yuuri into a panic almost immediately. The despair and guilt crashed over him, choking him, making it hard to breathe. His heart was racing as he choked on air, tears flowing down his cheeks, he started to sweat, all while his head was still pounding from the aftereffects of the alcohol.  
Toshiya stayed with his son while he cried and tried to restore his breathing. Such attacks didn’t happen very often, thankfully, but they had happened on a few occasions throughout Yuuri’s life. There was little that could be done. When panic set in, Yuuri usually just wanted to be left alone, but his family knew that if they left him, the panic would only last longer and the aftermath would be worse. So instead, Toshiya wrapped a blanket around Yuuri and held him close, rubbing his back, periodically reminding Yuuri to breathe in a soft, quiet voice.  
He wished there was something he could say to make Yuuri feel better, but no platitude would work just then. Of course, he whispered that things would be okay, but it had little effect. Vicchan was lost, and Yuuri blamed himself, and though someday that ache would recede, and would likely never quite be okay.  
Some time later, Yuuri’s breathing finally got back to normal and his heart stopped racing, but it would be a while before he could stop crying.  
All Yuuri could think about was how deeply he’d failed his friend. And on top of that he failed at the final, and then got so drunk that his sister and his world’s rulers had to carry him back home.  
He felt like nothing more than a failure, a traitor, and a waste of space. He knew, maybe, eventually he could get past this, but it would take a long time. At the moment, there was nothing but pain. 


	23. Chapter 23

The day after the banquet, Victor went through a long, confusing series of emotions.  
When he was informed that Yuuri had gone back to Halloween, at first he was upset, then confused, then a little angry, then sad again, then hopeful, then back to sad, and...well. He knew almost nothing about Yuuri besides his name, the fact that he was a figure skater, and the fact that he was from Halloween.  
So Victor knew he shouldn’t have really expected anything, because, of course, Yuuri would go back to his own world. Why wouldn’t he? He didn’t really belong in Christmas, and he barely knew Victor as well, so there was no reason for him to stay.  
But they’d had such an amazing time, Victor felt that they had some sort of connection. And Yuuri had asked him to coach him.  
But then Victor started to look at the situation more rationally, and all the great hopes he’d managed to form around Yuuri the night before now started to fall apart in the light of day.  
Yuuri had been drunk, so he likely didn’t mean what he’d said. Victor had never coached anyone in his life, so for someone to ask him to coach them made little sense. Maybe Yuuri had been joking, and even if that wasn’t the case, Victor was hardly in a position to coach.  
Victor was in a bad place after the competition, and Yuuri had given him joy and excitement, but at the end of the day, they still knew nothing about each other. So it was not at all surprising that Yuuri had gone home after the banquet. He had his own life in Halloween, and Victor had his in Christmas. One way or another, Victor had to make his peace with the fact that the banquet was a one-time burst of happiness that would likely never be repeated.

*****

Yuuri sat on his bed with a box in his hands. The box contained several bones that belonged to Vicchan. If they could find his head, the bones would reconnect and Vicchan would be back to normal. It had happened before.  
But the head was nowhere to be found, so all Yuuri had in his hands was remains of his friend who was now well and truly gone.  
Yuuri didn’t know if Vicchan was still conscious wherever he was, or if his mind was dormant. It was a terrifying thought to consider the possibility that Vicchan was simply stuck somewhere in the depths of the swamp soil, aware but unable to do anything.  
All Yuuri could think was that if he’d come home sooner, if he’d abandoned the competition and went back to Halloween right away, maybe he would have been able to find Vicchan.  
A part of him knew that likely wouldn’t be the case, because several people had spent several days looking for him, and Yuuri’s presence likely wouldn’t have made a difference, but then again, maybe it would have. Maybe if he’d come home, he would have been the one to find Vicchan even when no one else could. Maybe if he hadn’t gone to the competition at all, Vicchan never would have been lost in the first place.  
These thoughts kept coming back to Yuuri over and over again, no matter what he did or how hard he tried not to think about it.  
He went to the swamp regularly. On several occasions he went into the water and felt around the bottom soil, even though the swamp had been dredged several times and he knew there was nothing there.  
Like many things in Halloween, the swamp had a life of its own, infused with magic and things unknown. No one really understood exactly how it worked or where things went when they got sucked down in the bottom soil. Yuuri considered letting the swamp take him, and then maybe he’d find Vicchan on the other side, but there was a good chance that he would simply get stuck somewhere in the mud as well, and it wouldn’t help Vicchan any if Yuuri got buried alongside him in the swamp.  
So he visited the swamp often, he kept Vicchan’s bones under his bed; on some days he cried, on others he didn’t. Weeks passed, then months, but the guilt didn’t ease up. The fact that Yuuri didn’t know if his decision to stay in Christmas for the competition had made any difference to the outcome meant that his mind kept running through the possibilities, and he kept blaming himself for the fact that Vicchan was lost.  
When he wasn’t thinking about how much he’d failed Vicchan, his disastrous performances at the competition came to the forefront of his mind. He wonder if staying at the competition was a mistake in every sense, because not only was he absent when Vicchan needed him most, but his performance at the event was pathetic, shameful, and not even entertaining to watch. Maybe it would’ve been better if he simply wasn’t there. He’d stayed because he didn’t want to inconvenience anyone or let anyone down, but he let everyone down anyway, so what had even been the point of staying?  
And then he got drunk at the banquet, and he didn’t even know what that meant, because Mari hadn't been there, Sally had only arrived toward the end, and Jack didn’t want to talk about it because he was ashamed of having dragged Yuuri there in the first place, so all Yuuri knew was that he had to be mostly carried back home, which was embarrassing enough. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to know what could possibly have happened in the bits that were missing from his memory.  
Yuuri’s family didn’t know exactly how to help him. At first they tried to engage him as much as possible, but all attempts at fun activities mostly led to him becoming even more sad and leaving in order to be alone. In the end they decided to give him space and time to process on his own. As long as he ate and slept and occasionally went outside, they would let him recover in his own time, in his own way.  
Yuuri spent most of his days in silence, helping his parents with river maintenance, then wasting hours watching figure skating routines on his spy brew.  
A witch had helped him with a spell that allowed him to retain and rewatch visuals in his brew pot, so he often watched the same routines over and over again. He’d watched Victor’s latest program that he’d performed at a Christmas event. It was beautiful and elegant, though after having seen it many, many times, Yuuri started to notice that Victor looked sad, and his movements sometimes felt stiff, as though his skating relied more on a pre-planned series of moves and less on emotion and enjoyment of the sport.  
Yuuri wasn’t sure if he was just projecting his own negative emotions on Victor, or if Victor was indeed upset when he skated that routine. It was hard to tell. After all, despite all the information Yuuri had gathered about Victor over the time of being his fan, he still didn’t actually know him. Victor had his own life, and sometimes that meant he had things to be sad about as well.

*****

As was often the case, Christmas wasn’t the most joyful of times for Victor. He was no longer a child, so the fact that his birthday was overshadowed by the holiday didn’t bother him quite as much anymore, but the bitter feelings that had permeated his childhood because of Christmas still remained with him, even if they were now only a dull ache.  
Christmas, of course, meant figure skating performances and exhibitions, which Victor usually didn’t mind, but this year he was feeling a lot less up to it than he usually did. Ever since the inter-world competition, he’d been feeling disillusioned and uninspired, confused and lost. But duty called, and he had to perform.  
His program for the main event on Christmas day was a slightly modified version of his long program from the inter-world competition. His costume was made a little brighter and shinier, the music was rearranged to sound a bit more festive, and some of the more complex elements were removed from the program in favor of simpler moves that would still please the crowd.  
Victor performed as well as he could, and he smiled as brightly as ever, but he was having a hard time actually feeling the joy that he was supposed to embody with his performance. He feared that, perhaps, his mood would be noticeable in his skating, but most people who watched it were riding on the high of Christmas celebrations, and the joyful chimes of the music along with the sparkles of Victor’s costume helped mask whatever sadness that might have seeped out through the fake smiles.  
Yakov could tell that Victor wasn’t happy, but as usual, he said nothing.

The time immediately after Christmas was usually Victor’s time off. It would be a while before another competition would be held, and he didn’t have any events scheduled for a while so that he could rest before starting to work on his new programs.  
Victor wasn’t sure if he even wanted to do that. He wasn’t about to quit skating, if only because he didn’t know what else he could do with his life, but he wasn’t feeling the joy of it at the moment, he didn’t feel motivated enough to think of new programs, and his inspiration was all but absent.  
Victor still kept himself in good shape, he still came to the rink to practice so he wouldn’t lose his skills. But as the first months of the new year went by, Victor was feeling more and more like something was missing, and nothing quite made sense anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We'll be crawling out of the sad pit soon, I promise.


	24. Chapter 24

It took Yuuri a long time to return to the ice. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to skate. In fact, he knew that skating would probably help him feel better, but he often found it difficult to motivate himself enough to actually go out into the woods and skate.  
So much time had passed that his main practice lake had melted. The magic needed to be renewed periodically in order for the ice to remain solid. The other rinks in town were maintained by other witches, but Yuuri’s rink stood empty and soon returned back to its liquid state.  
Halloween’s other skaters became worried. Most of them looked up to Yuuri, and the thought that he might quit skating altogether made them uncomfortable. Lunar and Minami visited Yuuri sometimes, and would occasionally ask if he planned to skate again, but Yuuri didn’t say anything, and they didn’t want to push.  
It was several months after the competition that Yuuri finally went back into the woods and restored his ice. The spell had worn off so completely that even the trees around the lake had returned to their original colors, but now that Yuuri cast it again, the blue started to spread out, touching the trees, changing the leaves into snowflakes.  
“It’s nice to see you back,” a voice came from somewhere above him.  
Yuuri looked up to see Minako flying among the treetops. He smiled.  
“I’m painting your trees again,” he said apologetically.  
“You know I don’t mind,” Minako said, flying through one of the trees that was slowly turning blue. “These woods are better with you than without you.”  
“Thank you.”  
Yuuri sat down to put his skates on, then carefully stepped onto the ice.  
“May I watch?” Minako asked.  
“Ah...sure,” Yuuri said, though he felt a little self-conscious.  
He’d been off the ice for so long that his first few steps felt uneven, and it took him a few minutes to remember how to properly balance on the blades.  
After a while, he became more certain, and started to perform some of the simpler elements.  
When he started to skate his long program from the competition, he felt sick and had to stop. All he could think of when he skated that program was his failure. All of his failures.  
But he didn’t have the inspiration to create a new program yet either. So instead, he started to skate Victor’s most recent program. He’d seen it so many times in the past few months that he already knew it by heart. He decided that skating it would be good practice for him. He could perfect a program he liked, one that belonged to a skater he greatly respected, but one that did not have any of Yuuri’s own emotions attached to it. He’d never failed performing this program in the past, and he never would in the future because this program wasn’t his. He could become lost in it and skate without the pain or pressure of any past or future competitions.  
As he gradually made his way through learning the moves that he’d seen dozens, probably hundreds of times but had never actually skated before, Minako watched him from the side of the lake.  
“Yuuri,” she said, flying around him when he paused to rest. “In the beginning, when you sweep your arm above your head, if you move it like this,” said said, demonstrating the motion, “it will look more gentle.”  
Yuuri tried it the way Minako said, and even though he couldn’t see himself, he could feel that the movement became more graceful.  
When it came to elegance of motion, Minako’s insight was indispensable. She was a dancer, and a tree spirit. Moving with grace was part of who she was, and Yuuri was always grateful when she chose to share her skill and experience with him.  
As Minako gave him a few more tips on his performance, he wondered if he could benefit from having a coach in the long run. Having someone look at your performances from the outside and tell you what could be improved would likely help his skating get much better. And although he was quite good at creating his own programs, having someone else to help with choreography could also enrich his own experience as well as that of those who watched him skate.  
Yuuri had thought of this before, but the truth was that there simply wasn’t anyone in Halloween who could really coach him. He was the first person in town to actually skate. Everyone else in town who skated started much later. Minako still acted as his teacher sometimes, and her ghost dance classes had formed much of his skating style and deeply affected the way he moved, but she wasn’t a skater, so when it came to things that were unique to skating, there was little she could teach him.  
Yuuri sighed and went back to practice, brushing the thoughts away. Having a coach would be nice, but it wasn’t necessary. It just so happened that Yuuri had effectively introduced skating into his world, and one downfall of this was that there was no one who could be his coach.  
No one in Halloween.

*****

By the time Victor’s first competition of the year came, he had 2 new programs, neither of which he particularly liked. They were decent, complex enough that he would probably win, but there was nothing new about them, nothing original, nothing surprising.  
He’d finally mastered the combination that Sara had performed so flawlessly at the inter-world competition, and that Victor had rather epically failed. But knowing that he could now perform those jumps gave him little joy, because it no longer felt like an accomplishment. He’d won against Sara even though she had been the superior athlete, so what was the point of getting better if it had no bearing on whether or not he’d win.  
And he did, in fact, win the first Christmas Town competition of the year. Mila placed second, while Yuri placed third.  
After taking pictures and doing interviews, the winners headed to yet another after party, and it was painful in a way to be there now as Victor remembered the last banquet he’d been at and how much different it had been to this dull chore of an event that he currently had to endure.  
“You don’t look so great,” Mila said, joining Victor where he stood by the wall.  
“He’s sulking again,” Yuri commented, appearing seemingly from nowhere by Victor’s side.  
Victor rolled his eyes.  
“I’m fine,” he said. “This is just boring.”  
“He’s been like this for months,” Yuri said to Mila.  
Mila had returned to Christmas Town for the competition, but she was currently living and training in New Year’s, so she’d missed the long months of Victor’s apathy and sadness that the rest of his rink had to watch on a daily basis.  
“What’s wrong?” Mila said, taking a sip of her drink.  
“Nothing’s wrong,” Victor replied, sounding far more defensive than he would have wanted. “How’s New Year’s?”  
“Great! I’m learning a lot of new stuff, and I’m having lots of fun.”  
“You still lost though,” Yuri said.  
“Well, I was competing against Victor in Christmas, wasn’t I?” Mila said with a cheeky smile.  
“Excuse me,” Victor said, putting his glass down and walking away from the conversation, and then out of the banquet hall.  
Mila stared after him, feeling a little guilty now. She hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings. It was a running joke among all of Christmas’ skaters that winning against Victor was impossible, both because he was good, and because he was an undeniable favorite in town, so it was effectively decided that he would win every competition he entered even if he skated around the rink a few times and then bowed.  
Mila had a great respect for Victor as a skater and had nothing against him as a person either, she had no intention of dismissing his skill or his dedication to the sport, but it was also hard to deny that his fame and popularity had a tendency to slant the results in his favor. Everyone knew it. It was just that now Victor was starting to realize it as well, and it was affecting him much deeper than most would have expected.  
“See what I mean?” Yuri said. “He’s been sulking for months because he thinks he won the inter-world competition unfairly and now he’s just...well, that. Uninspired. And you know what that means.”  
Mila nodded, looking out of the window where she could just see Victor making his way through the snow, away from the building.  
“Well, if he’s so unhappy,” she said, “then maybe he should change something.”

Victor went home and picked up Makkachin, then they both headed out for a long walk.  
He didn’t know where he was going, hoping to clear his head and maybe feel a little better, but he hadn’t been able to feel particularly good in a long time now, so a walk likely wouldn’t make much of a difference.  
Makkachin jumped around in the snow, happy as always to be out on a walk. She brought a stick for him to throw, and even though Victor wasn’t feeling very playful, he threw the stick anyway, watching Makka run joyfully through the snow, leaving clouds of white in her wake.  
They walked for a long time as it got darker and darker. Victor had warm clothes on, but he was starting to get cold and he figured Makka was probably feeling chilly as well, despite her thick coat.  
He was about to turn around and head home when he saw where they’d ended up.  
It was the clearing where the doors to other worlds stood, holiday symbols engraved in the bark of the trees.  
Makkachin walked around the clearing for a little while, sniffing at the trees. In the end she sat firmly by the door to Halloween and looked at Victor expectantly.  
Victor shook his head, but Makka only stared, tilting her head a little to signify that he was being silly.  
Sometimes Victor wondered how Makkachin knew some of the things she knew, but he’d long since stopped questioning her abilities. He’d simply accepted that there was wisdom and understanding in Makka that he could never quite explain.  
“It’s not a good idea,” he said halfheartedly.  
Makka whined a little, pawing at the side of the tree.  
Victor sighed and walked up close to the door. He opened it just a little, just to peek in. He’d never been to Halloween and had no idea what it was like, and he was curious.  
Of course, peeking into a holiday entrance never quite worked out as intended, and seconds later Victor found himself flying through the portal, spinning around with no control over the travel.  
Makkachin jumped in after him, and seconds later they both landed on the other side, making a splash of leaves around them.  
Victor hadn’t imagined this was how his day would turn out, but here he was, surrounded by tall, dark trees, and a distinctive lack of snow, somewhere in Halloween.


	25. Chapter 25

It took Victor a moment to regain his equilibrium after the travel. He got up and looked around at the trees. Makka walked around him a few times, then started running into the woods.  
“Makka, wait!” Victor yelled, but she was already on her way somewhere, and he had no choice but to run after her.  
She didn’t run far, slowing down a few moments later, allowing Victor to catch up.  
They were well into the depths of Halloween now, and Victor really had no idea where they were. So they just walked.  
The trees were mostly brown or black, but as they walked deeper into the woods, they started coming across trees that were blue, and their leaves looked like oversized snowflakes.  
They kept walking, and Victor was both terrified and excited at the same time. But mostly excited. This was the first time in months that Victor felt truly interested in something, and his whole body was buzzing with the thrill of it.  
“I know you,” a faint voice came from somewhere among the trees. “Keep walking.”  
Victor looked around frantically, but there was no one there. For a moment he felt startled, but the momentary fear was quickly replaced with fascination.  
This town was so strange, so new, so...like nothing he’d ever seen before. Even the trees covered in snowflakes were new. Victor had spent his whole life surrounded by every kind of snow imaginable, but he’d never seen trees that had snowflakes for leaves.  
A few times Victor thought he saw someone or something move somewhere nearby, but the moment he turned, it was gone.  
He remembered what Santa had told him a little after Jack and Sally’s visit to Victor’s rink. Victor had asked him what Halloween was like, and Santa said that it was scary. He said the whole point of the town was to be scary, and everyone in town was a little...off. Victor didn’t know what that meant, and now as he was walking through the woods in Halloween, he felt slightly scared, but not in a bad way. It felt like a fast sleigh ride – just scary enough to be exciting, just dangerous enough to make you feel alive.  
Makkachin was sniffing everything, occasionally changing directions. She was on a mission, but Victor didn’t know what it was, so he just followed her. That had never really failed him before.  
The deeper into the woods they walked, the bluer the trees got. It was a rich, beautiful color, which reminded Victor of the blue rose he’d gotten from someone after his performance in Valentine’s Day. He loved that rose. He still had it in his home, in fact. He’d dried it, and it stood in a vase on his mantle. It had faded overtime, and was now mostly black, which made Victor sad at first, but it was also exciting because it made him wonder if the flower had been enthused with some sort of magic. He’d heard that magic dissipated overtime, and he liked to believe that for a little while he got to own something that was genuinely magical.  
Victor got so lost in his own thoughts and enjoyment of the beauty and peculiarity of the woods around him that he lost track of time. He didn’t know how much time had passed when he noticed that Makkachin had stopped and sat down by one of the trees.  
Victor approached her with a questioning look, but she only looked at him with an expression he’d learned to think of as a smile, then turned away. He followed her gaze to see what she was looking at, and there it was. A clearing. And in that clearing, a frozen lake, with ice of the same dark blue color as the trees around it. And on that ice...Yuuri.

*****

On that day, Yuuri had woken up early, long before anyone else in his family. It didn’t happen very often as he wasn’t a morning person, but sometimes his anxiety woke him up, and that heavy, uncomfortable feeling in his chest kept him from falling back asleep.  
Yuuri’s mother sometimes said that his anxiety was a side effect of his magical abilities. That sometimes he sensed things others couldn’t. Bad things happening elsewhere, someone else’s emotions, something that was happening outside of the range of his other senses. She liked telling him a story of how his grandparents had met. His grandfather had felt anxious and worried for reasons he couldn’t understand, so he went for a walk in hopes that it would make him feel better. It was then that he met his future partner by the river, where she’d also come in order to calm her nerves.  
Yuuri’s mother believed that it was their magic that had brought them together, but Yuuri wasn’t sure if that was true. It was nice and romantic to think of it that way, and he always smiled when his mother told him that story. But he knew other people who suffered from attacks of anxiety and panic, and many of them had no magical abilities, so believing that every instance of anxiety had a magical meaning didn’t seem realistic.  
He thought, perhaps, he simply had both – an illness and a side effect of magic. But there was no way of telling which one was affecting him at any given moment.  
That morning, when Yuuri woke up with a familiar sense of distress coursing through his body, he sighed and resigned to the fact that he wouldn’t be able to sleep anymore that day, so instead he picked up his bag and went to the lake to skate.  
By the time he was fully warmed up and started practicing his basics, the sun began to come up, and snowflake-leaves on the trees around him were sparkling in the morning light.  
Yuuri began to skate Victor’s program. It had become something of a routine for him to skate that program at least once every day. He felt calm and peaceful when he skated it.  
Unbeknownst to him, just a short distance away, Victor and Makkachin were watching from their hiding spot among the trees.  
Victor gasped softly when he realized that Yuuri was skating his program. A cascade of emotions washed over him as he watched Yuuri perform the routine – awe, confusion, admiration, envy, affection. Maybe even anger – because Yuuri was capable of such skill and beauty, and yet no one at the inter-world competition final had seen it. Yuuri should have won. He should have won everything. He deserved to win everything.  
Since the last time he’d performed it, Victor had grown to almost hate that program. When he watched a recording of himself skating it at the latest Christmas event, he could see how stiff his movements were, his sadness and lack of inspiration seeping into his performance.  
The way Yuuri skated it was nothing like that. The sadness was still there, but he had somehow filled it with grace and purpose.  
The sadness was never meant to be a part of this program, but Yuuri had seen it in Victor’s performance, and instead of removing it from his own interpretation, he’d embraced it, making it an intended nuance rather than a mistake Victor had made. From a joyful program Victor had accidentally skated with sadness, Yuuri had turned it into an ode to sorrow felt in the midst of a celebration where one didn’t want to be.  
Victor wasn’t sure if there was a name for the combination of things that Yuuri’s skating was making him feel. He’d been so absorbed by competition dynamics – by whether or not his technical skills were better than someone else’s, whether or not his presentation was superior to that of his opponents – that he’d forgotten what had made him want to skate in the first place. The beauty of the sport, the expressiveness, the strength that appeared effortless, the all-consuming concentration, the awe a truly stunning performance could evoke. Those were the things filling his mind as he watched Yuuri skate his program better than Victor himself ever could.  
Suddenly, he didn’t care if he would win yet another competition or not. No, he wanted to see Yuuri win it. At last, Victor found his inspiration, but it wasn’t for his own skating, it was for Yuuri’s. He wanted everyone in every world to see just what a talented skater Yuuri was.  
Victor didn’t know whether one day his inspiration for skating would return to him, and at the moment he didn’t really care. Because at the moment Yuuri’s words – “Be my coach, Victor!” – were ringing through his head, and he barely even cared that he knew nothing of coaching or that Yuuri had been drunk when he made that request. If Victor could do anything at all to help Yuuri realize his full potential and show it to the world, to all the worlds, he would. He hadn’t been this sure or this excited about anything since the beginning of his figure skating career.  
He waited for Yuuri to finish his program, then slowly came out of his hiding spot in the woods.  
Yuuri turned when he heard footsteps and almost fell when he saw Victor and Makkachin approaching the ice.  
Yuuri froze in place, his eyes widening. He pulled his glasses out of the inside pocket of his practice jacket, because surely, his eyes were playing tricks on him.  
Victor’s silver hair and bright smile came into focus when Yuuri set his glasses on his nose. Makkachin let out a single excited bark as she sat down by the edge of the lake.  
“Victor...” Yuuri said, staring. “Why are you here?”  
“Yuuri!” Victor said cheerfully. “Starting today, I am your coach. I will train you for the next inter-world figure skating competition. And you’re going to win.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There we go. Thank you for reading!  
> A sequel is, of course, a possibility. In fact, I initially intended for this fic to take them all the way past canon, but I ended up exploring this section of their story more in-depth. I do, however, know more or less where the story is going next, all I need to do is write it.  
> It won't be right away though, I'm sorry. Since I started a YouTube channel, I've been stretching myself a little thin creatively, and I don't want writing to turn into a chore. I also might go back to Never Too Late for a bit before I continue this story.  
> Unless I die though, the sequel will happen at some point.


End file.
